HOUSTON – In 2000, Halle Shamille Smith was born prematurely at 27 weeks. She experienced a number of health problems, had a stroke, got tuberculosis, and spent her life being fed PediaSure though a feeding tube, but still, she weighed a respectable 35 pounds at age 2 (and could sit up, say “mama” and “daddy,” watch TV, and cry when it was diaper change time). In January 2009, when she was brought into Methodist Willowbrook Hospital by her mother and pronounced dead shortly thereafter, 8-year-old Halle weighed a whopping 15.8 pounds. Got that? Fifteen-point-eight, not 158. The medical examiner cited malnutrition and dehydration as the cause of the girl’s death and classified it a homicide. Finally, this past week, Halle’s mother Almita Nicole Lockhart, 34, was arrested and is sitting her worthless drug-using baby-spewing child-starving ass in jail, facing 5 years to life on a felony injury to a child charge. But, wait, Denizens! It gets better worse! Read on and join me for some enraged screaming, tearing of hear, and voluntary smashing of the head against the wall.

Back in 2008, when I got done writing about the life and horrible starvation death of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly, I assumed it would be a cold day in hell before I would ever find myself writing about a case so simultaneously grisly, disgusting, heartbreaking, infuriating, and fucking chock-full of FAIL. But in some ways, this one might actually be worse. Let me detail some comparisons for you.

1. Mom Spits Out Kids Like a Pez Dispenser Spits Out Candy. Like Andrea Kelly, Lockhart had at least one child with serious health issues (Danieal had cerebral palsy) and nine other children. Unlike Andrea, Lockhart had farmed those nine other children, ranging in age from 2 to 18, out to adults who, according to a CPS representative, “had drugs and weapons in the home.” Further, Lockhart is at least 6 years younger than Kelly, meaning that she either started on her reproductive warpath earlier, was trying for a baby-producing speed record, or both.

2. Child Rearing in a Completely Inappropriate Environment. Danieal Kelly suffered and died in the squalid, sweltering, just-this-side-of-condemned home she shared with her mother and siblings. Little Halle? She spent her last days in an empty apartment. And when I say empty, I mean empty. No furniture. No TV. No pretty little girl decorations. No one else. Just a bit of trash and some feeding supplies, as this photo posted by Houston’s KHOU shows.

I never thought I’d see that day where I’d be able to say I’m glad that Danieal at least had people around her and died on a bed.

3. Child Protective Services FAIL. You can read in the Danieal story I linked above about the many ways in which DHS failed Danieal Kelly, and the repercussions of that case continue to sound in the halls of that agency and criminal cases are still underway. It is only today, 13 months after Halle’s death, that the Houston Chronicle published a piece calling into question CPS’s role in Halle’s death, especially considering that CPS has suspected for 17 years that Almita Lockhart is unable and/or unwilling to care for her children, yet she has never had a child removed. As Terri Langford and Dale Lezon detail in the article, complaint after complaint after complaint was made about Lockhart, and it was only when Lockhart tested positive for drugs at the birth of Halle in 2000 and then the birth of a later child in 2005 that CPS stepped in, ordering her into drug treatment. In neither instance did she comply, yet the cases were closed by CPS.

Halle was last seen by a CPS worker in 2006, who described her as “healthy” but never consulted with Halle’s pediatrician. The failure to do so and the closure of the 2005 case despite Lockhart’s failure to complete drug treatment led CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins to say, “At that point in the case, we could have consulted with our attorneys about a possible removal. We did not do so. In hindsight, that can certainly be viewed as a mistake.” Yes, Pat, it certainly can.

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To add insult to injury, the only photos available of Halle are those that were taken at her death. When she died, her sole belongings were listed as a shirt and a purple blanket. Her body is buried in an unmarked grave at Paradise North Cemetery.

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