Ten months after the violent death of the girl Julissia Batties due to alleged abuse in her home in the Bronx (NYC), today her mother and older brother were arrested in the case.
Navasia Jones, aged 11 and her son Paul Fine Jr. (18) were arrested this morning with charges pending against them. They were expected to be charged with vicious murder, manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a minor, the sources said. The teenager will face an additional charge of sexual abuse.
“The mother and brother are both guilty,” a high-ranking police source told the New York Post. “Both had a role in this, but it is not clear who struck the fatal blow.”
The 7-year-old girl was part of a heated battle over his custody for most of his short life. She was found with injuries to her head and body inside her NYCHA apartment in the Mitchel Houses complex on Alexander Avenue (The Bronx), last morning 05 of August. She was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, but she could not be saved. The case was declared a homicide, but as of this morning no arrests had been made.
The minor did not want to return to live with her mother and crying, she asked her paternal grandmother, who was also her adoptive mother , to call the police to prevent her from being moved, according to a harrowing audio recording released last May. The exact date of that audio is not clear.
Despite her pleas, the minor was sent to the home of her biological mother, who had lost custody of the girl at birth, along with four children, for alleged neglect and physical abuse.
The girl had been living with her paternal grandmother. Jones had only just regained unsupervised custody by the end of June 2021 and Julissia died less than two months later, in what that would be a new case of gross negligence by the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). Even a week earlier, the mother prevented the girl from being interviewed, a police source told Pix11.
A medical examiner’s report revealed that Julissia died of trauma to the abdomen, and also confirmed old and new injuries to her face and arm. The mother, who suffers from bipolar disorder, had eight prior arrests at the time, including two for threats. In that home she lived with her three children: the adolescent Fine Jr. who would have confessed abuse to Julissia, a 3-year-old baby and the deceased girl. Police had been called to that apartment six times in two years for suspected abuse.
Even after she died, the girl Julissia was in the morgue for more than two months because her separated parents could not agree on what to do with her remains. Father Julius Batties eventually won the right to bury her, while her mother insisted on cremating her, according to court documents.
Several children died in recent months in 2021 in NYC, victims of alleged abuse in their homes. Other cases have also been reported in 2022. If you are a victim or suspect that someone is being mistreated, especially if they are a minor or elderly: