Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd was visibly emotional as he revealed heartbreaking details of Tuesday’s starvation death a 3-year-old girl endured at the hands of her parents.
Regis Johnson, 57, and Arhonda Tillman, 35, were charged with aggravated child neglect and will likely be charged with murder after their toddler daughter died weighing only nine pounds and with “zero food in her stomach”.
“The baby should have been talking, putting sentences together, asking questions, telling that ‘my diaper needs to be changed,’ running, jumping, and playing,” Judd said.
“When this baby died, on May the 10th, she couldn’t stand. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t walk. This baby never got to be this big.”
The sheriff noted that while the victim’s father weighed 213 pounds and her pregnant mom about 145 pounds, the child only gained one ounce in almost two years.
“This baby laid in a playpen made out of an inflatable swimming pool and starved absolutely to death,” Judd added. “If you can imagine looking at such a heartbreaking sight, basically it was just bones and skin.”
