Houston: No charges will be filed in the case of a 9-year-old boy who fatally stabbed a 2-year-old girl in a Texas home where a teen-ager was babysitting 12 children, Dallas police said after an investigation.
The stabbing occurred on December 22 in a home in southeast Dallas where a 15-year-old was left to supervise at least 10 siblings and 2 other children, including the victim.
The toddler, Damya Jefferson, was stabbed twice in the chest by a 9-year-old boy who lived at the house, according to published reports.
No charges will be filed against the boy due to his age, said Dallas Police Sgt Gil Cerda. ''You have to be 10 years old to be charged in Texas,'' Cerda said on Tuesday.
Nor are charges being contemplated against parents of the victim or the 9-year-old, Cerda said. ''There is no further investigation,'' he told Reuters.
The 9-year-old was taken into the custody of the Texas Department of Child Protective Services. All the other children in the home at the time, including an infant sibling of the victim, have been placed with family members or are in foster care, until a hearing on whether they can be reunited with their parents, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for the children's agency, told Fox News Live television in Dallas yesterday that the agency had investigated allegations of child neglect at the home where the stabbing occurred several times over the years.
None of the children had ever been removed from the home by the agency. ''This mother, we had worked with her several times, mostly to make sure the children's needs were being met,'' Gonzales told Fox News.
''I don't think there were any indications that any of these children were violent and would harm another child,'' Gonzales told the television station Reuters.
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