Whisper
#byefelicia
Thaiya Spruill-Smith, 2, is currently on life support after suffering a massive brain injury
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...pport-alleged-abuse-stepdad-article-1.2011799[...]
shaken toddler won’t live to see her third birthday, and authorities charged the Brooklyn girl’s stepfather Friday night in her savage assault.
Two-year-old Thaiya Spruill-Smith was lying brain dead in a hospital, her tiny body being kept alive by machines after suffering a massive head injury at the hands of stepdad David Adam
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The tragic girl is expected to be taken off the machines on Saturday afternoon, once her parents decide if they want to donate her organs, family members said. Doctors told her parents, Teoka Spruill and Terrell Smith on Friday night that Taiya has no hope of recovery.
Adams, 25, is currently facing charges of assault, reckless assault on a child and acting in a manner injurious to a child, but those charges are expected to be upgraded to murder on Saturday
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It was not immediately revealed why Adams harmed the child, but he admitted to shaking little Thaiya when questioned,
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Thaiya’s aunt D’Anna Smith said police told her family that Adams made a full confession and used a doll to show detectives how he violently thrashed the little girl. She also said Spruill, 24, is being used as a witness to say that she left her daughter alone with Adams for about 50 minutes, during which Thaiya was irreparably shaken.
That shaking may not be the only torture inflicted on little Thaiya during her short life: She may have been the victim of months of physical abuse, her devastated father
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The city investigated the abuse claims, and even took Thaiya out of her mother’s home, but the agency returned her a week later,
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confidentiality laws, but said the agency is looking into what caused Thaiya’s death.
Doctors told Smith Thaiya suffered bleeding on the brain. Her injuries went untreated for days
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After hours of sitting by his daughter’s side in her hospital room, choking back tears as he listened to the machines keeping Thaiya alive, Smith chose to focus on good memories instead of a blank future.
“She’s very smart . . . she’d sit there and watch football with me all day,” he said of the girl, who had a passion for chocolate milk. “I used to have to go to McDonald’s and buy her a six-pack of chocolate milk.”
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had left Thaiya in Adams’ care when the injuries were inflicted, a law enforcement source said.
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The mom called 911 at 6:40 a.m. Thursday, complaining Thaiya had had trouble breathing since the night before
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Paramedics rushed the toddler from her Dumont Ave. home in Brownsville’s Tilden Houses to Brookdale University Hospital, where she was listed in critical condition. Cops were called in after doctors found bruising on Thaiya’s body
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Smith said Adams had abused the child repeatedly, leaving her with bruises and a bloody lip.
Spruill met Adams in March and quickly married him, Smith said. In June, he began finding bruises and welts all over his daughter.
“[Thaiya] told me she fell through Mommy’s glass table,” the Red Hook resident said. “When I’m asking my daughter’s mother about the marks, she says to ask her husband.”
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Adams has been arrested before, but only for minor traffic violations.
Spruill filed for an order of protection against Smith in October, claiming her child’s father had stalked and tried to detain her.
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Spruill is the half-sister of 17-year-old Tiona Rodriguez, who inexplicably was carrying her dead baby boy in a plastic bag at Victoria’s Secret in Herald Square when she was arrested on a shoplifting charge on Oct. 17, 2013.
The medical examiner determined Rodriguez’s newborn son died from homicidal asphyxiation, but no criminal charges have been filed against the teen,
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The heartbreaking news about Thayia comes a day after more than 200 family members and friends paid their final respects to 3-year-old Jeida Torres, who died Oct. 18 in a city shelter after being kicked and slammed into a metal bed frame, allegedly by her 20-year-old stepfather, Kelsey Smith.
Terrell Smith claims little Thaiya may have been the victim of months of physical abuse.