Maine authorities say a 10-year-old girl suffered months of beatings and abuse before her death. Here’s what we know.
Prosecutors say the couple’s abuse of the child could “only be described as torture.”
A Maine mother and stepfather of a 10-year-old girl are accused of beating the child daily for months before she succumbed to her injuries and died last week. Sharon Carrillo, 33, and Julio Carrillo, 51, of Stockton Springs, Maine, have been charged with the depraved indifference murder of Marrissa Kennedy and were held Wednesday on $500,000 bail, according to the Bangor Daily News. News of the child’s death and reports of the horrific abuse she was allegedly subjected to by her mother and stepfather has shocked neighbors and left the Maine communities questioning why authorities and the state Department of Health and Human Services didn’t intervene sooner. Here’s what we know about case.
The crime
Authorities allege that the 10-year-old suffered months of physical abuse and beatings before her speech began to slur and she stopped moving on Feb. 22 or 23, according to the Daily News.According to court records obtained by the Portland Press Herald, Kennedy was beaten multiple times a day by her mother and stepfather starting in October. The couple reportedly told police that they punished the girl by forcing her to kneel on a tile floor — because it would hurt more than a wooden surface — and hold her hands above her head while they hit her with their hands or used a belt to whip her between 10 and 15 times. Sometimes they locked her in a dark closet for extended periods as she screamed, they told police, according to the Press Herald. In one instance about three weeks before her death, Julio Carrillo allegedly hit the child repeatedly across her ribs with a metal mop so hard he broke the handle, the Daily News reports. The broken mop handle was still present in the home when police arrived to investigate her death.The couple told police that they decided against seeking medical attention for the 10-year-old when she began to slur her speech, and they allegedly “punished” her again, thinking she was pretending, according to the newspaper.Julio Carrillo called 911 on Feb. 24 saying he found the girl unresponsive and bleeding from her mouth next to the furnace in the basement, according to the Daily News. He told first responders he believed Kennedy had been playing down there alone and that he carried the unconscious girl up to her bedroom when he found her. When investigators questioned the couple’s version of events after not finding any blood in the basement and asked if the girl was physically disciplined, the Carrillos admitted to abusing the child and staging the basement and her body for first responders, according to the Daily News. The cause of Kennedy’s death was listed as battered child syndrome by the medical examiner’s office, which found the girl had bleeding in the brain, a lacerated liver, and multiple old injuries, the Press Herald reports. “What she was subjected to can only be described as torture,” Assistant Attorney General Donald Macomber said in court Wednesday, the Press Herald reported. “Multiple times a day, every day for months.”The Department of Health and Human Services took into custody the couple’s two other children, a 1-year-old and 2-year-old, the newspaper reports.
Previous interactions with authorities
The family moved to Stockton Springs last summer, where, according to the Press Herald, the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office responded at least twice after receiving 911 hang-ups from the home.Previously, the couple and their children lived in Bangor, where police reportedly responded to the Carrillos’ apartment for six calls, ranging from three welfare checks to a call for a “juvenile runaway,” between December 2016 and June 2017, according to the Daily News. Dan Whitney, who lived near the couple in Bangor, told the Press Herald he saw police go into the Carrillos’ apartment at least six times but never saw anyone arrested. The 68-year-old told the newspaper he, his wife, and other neighbors called the police when they could hear Julio Carrillo beating and yelling at Sharon Carrillo. Whitney told the Press Herald the apparent abuse began almost as soon as the family moved in, around August 2016. Jill Reid, who worked as a cleaner at the Bangor apartment building, told the Daily News that she called and texted with a social worker at the Department of Health and Human Services about six or seven times in 2017, concerned that Kennedy was being neglected and abused. “To DHHS, I said there’s something not right,” she told the newspaper. “They’re not sending her to school. Her sneakers are there in the hallway.”The woman said she also called the department’s child abuse hotline after hearing what sounded like Carrillo beating his wife. The Department of Health and Human Services has not confirmed or denied whether the Carrillos were ever reported to, or investigated by, the agency.“Someone dropped the ball here,” Whitney told the newspaper. “That little girl shouldn’t be dead right now. The thing of it is, you’re encouraged to call when something bad is happening, but it’s really discouraging when you do call and nothing happens.”Ethan Miele, the couple’s former upstairs neighbor in Bangor, told the newspaper he called the police at least once.“All I’m going to say is it’s a tragedy and I did what I could do to make it stop,” he told the newspaper.Miele told News Center Maine he and his roommate kicked in the couple’s door in one instance, concerned about how loud the beatings were. A spokesman for Maine State police told the Daily News that Kennedy hadn’t been to school since November.
What’s next?
During Wednesday’s court hearing, Macomber asked that Sharon Carrillo undergo a mental examination, according to the Press Herald. The assistant attorney general said in court that the woman had no apparent criminal history, while her husband has a past conviction in Kentucky for domestic violence, according to the Daily News. Christopher MacLean, who is representing the mother of the 10-year-old, told the newspaper he would be “looking closely” at what potential influence Julio Carrillo had over his client and the extent of the stepfather’s alleged abuse of Kennedy. “I think there’s a lot going on in this family,” the lawyer told the Daily News.
“There’s always a rush to believe the worst and to believe that these people are villainous monsters,” he also said, according to the Associated Press. “But fortunately we have this legal system that is a buffer that allows us to sift through to see what really happened.”
Steven Peterson, who is representing Julio Carrillo, told the newspaper Thursday that his client informed him that Sharon Carrillo is pregnant and is expected to give birth in May.
The attorney previously said he also plans to have the man’s mental health evaluated.
The couple returns to court April 20, according to the Press Herald.
