PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A severely disabled 3-year-old girl weighed just 11 pounds when she died Monday and police in Philadelphia called her death a homicide.
Nathalyz Rivera was found unresponsive inside the family's bug-infested home by her father around midnight, Homicide Capt. James Clark. The girl was driven to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Clark said Rivera's father, 30-year-old Carlos Rivera, found the girl unresponsive but called her mother rather than 911. Police are searching for Rivera after they said he left four other children in a relative's care and fled.
"It's very sad, very disturbing," Clark said of the girl's death, which the medical examiner termed a homicide caused primarily by starvation.
Nathalyz also had some bruising, but Clark said that may have come from flea or bug bites at the house, which he said was in "bad shape."
"(She) had not seen a doctor in over a year, even with all the severe disabilities," Clark said. He did not specify the girl's medical conditions.
Philadelphia police have handled several starvation deaths involving children in Philadelphia, including the 2006 death of a disabled teenager targeted for an array of weekly city services at her home. Danieal Kelly weighed just 42 pounds when she died at age 14.