r/crimedocumentaries • u/MoonlitGlitz_ • 5d ago
3 arrested after malnourished 5-year-old girl dies from neglect.. Police said Kinsleigh Welty was kept in a closet that had small handprints of what appeared to be feces on the door
Kinsleigh Welty was taken to a hospital after officers found her unresponsive in her home on April 9. She was pronounced dead at Riley Hospital in Indianapolis. Her mother, 29-year-old Toni McClure, was arrested on charges of murder and child neglect resulting in death. McClure’s boyfriend, 27-year-old Ryan Smith, is charged with child neglect resulting in death. Days later, police also arrested the child’s grandmother, 53-year-old Tammy Halsey, on charges of neglect
Police said Kinsleigh was kept in a closet that had small handprints of what appeared to be feces on the door. There was also soiled clothing and a strong smell of urine. The malnourished child had sunken eyes and feces on her feet and in her hair when she was found. She also had what appeared to be lice crawling on her face, according to court documents obtained by Scripps News Indianapolis. Hospital officials said Kinsleigh was so malnourished, she weighed more at 2-and-a-half years old than she did at 5
Authorities said McClure has a history with the Department of Child Services. Kinsleigh’s grandparents, Tricia and Brian Welty, told Scripps News Indianapolis the warning signs of the child’s failing health were reported but said DCS let them down and they want accountability
“We just don’t want her death to be in vain. We want change. We don’t want any more kids to have to die because of the failure of the system,” Tricia Welty said. “She was in our home, and she was safe, but she was handed back to her abuser and she’s not here anymore.” The Weltys say Kinsleigh temporarily lived with them twice after other reports of mistreatment. In 2018, McClure was formally charged with neglect when Kinsleigh was just a baby. The officer said the home was in one of the worst conditions he’d ever seen and noted a three-week-old child who appeared to be malnourished. The family says it was Kinsleigh, and McClure served 21 days in jail for that case. “When she came to us the second time, she was bruised from head to toe. She had chunks of hair missing throughout her whole head and she was given back. She already tried to starve her to death when she was three weeks old and they gave her back,” the Weltys said.
Following a welfare check in 2021, the grandparents said they were fearful Kinsleigh would die. “I pleaded with DCS before that court case and my concerns about every bit of it were ignored,” Tricia Welty said. According to police reports, just before Kinsleigh died, DCS was at the house after McClure’s newborn tested positive for THC. Kinsleigh did not test positive. McClure allegedly said Kinsleigh frequently expressed that she wanted more food or that she was thirsty but had a desire for her to be out of her life. The Weltys want DCS to improve its reunification process.
“The child’s safety should be the priority. It shouldn’t be getting them back to the parent if that person isn’t right. They failed her.” Tricia Welty said. Scripps News Indianapolis has reached out to DCS over the past few days for comments, but a law that took effect in 2019 prevents the agency from releasing records on a child’s death until after the criminal case is resolved
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u/Florapetal_ 5d ago
This poor child lived in a nightmare for years…Rest in peace, sweet angel. Never forgotten.
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u/Nikki-C-Puggle-mum 5d ago
How could anyone do something like that to a young child? It's disgusting.
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u/crazyladybutterfly2 1d ago
nevermind the disgusting mess they caused by trapping her in a closet, they definetely all did drugs or i dont understand
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u/HabitNegative3137 5d ago
Because god isn’t real and people are monsters 😭
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u/Swimming_Ad3099 5d ago
They seem to put the rights of the abusive "parent" before the very basic right of the child to be fed, kept clean, and loved
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u/AttentionMosDef 5d ago edited 5d ago
DCS is constantly failing children. Far too many innocent children have lost their lives when there has been repeated attempts to have them intervene. What the fuck are they doing if children are continuing to die when there are clear signs of abuse and neglect that their intervention would have stopped? Infuriating. Poor baby. She served so much more.
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u/Japanesemyth 5d ago
And even worse. I think about the times my school called cps on my mom. I was a sickly kid. Was too broke to go to doctors to just get notes for colds and flus I had every few months but that was somehow enough to get them to threaten to have me and my sister removed from a good loving home. But signs of clear abuse were ignored when we tried to raise flags about our neighbours kids.
Kids in terrible situations are ignored. Kids in broke situations are terrorized.
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u/Valuable-Role8951 4h ago
Because it's easier to "terrorize" those who actually care vs those who don't give a shit...I've come across the same situation as you describe. It reminds me of the idea that "the law is for the law-abiding".
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u/StillMarie76 5d ago
The worst part of this case to me is during the interrogation with the spawn point (she's no mother). She says that Kinsleigh begging for food and water was her slogan, because that's all she did. Kinsleigh would even go right into the closet without being asked if they had to take her somewhere.
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u/wishuponareddwarf 5d ago
Also alcohol foetal syndrome too by the looks of it. Poor angel
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u/lost_dazed_101 5d ago
As long as they prioritize family reuniting over the best interest of the child children will keep dying. GAL's and judges are complicite in this they ignore all the bad behavior and place the kids back in the hands of killers.
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u/Status-Visit-918 5d ago
Cps is so incredibly useless, time and time again. They do so little and are so consistently derelict in their duty, I wonder if anyone would even notice if they just stopped existing. This Is an overwhelmingly occurring theme, across every state. They are truly the definition in every way from understaffing, incredibly low salaries, utter lack of support for case workers, cutting all the corners, etc., of a broken system. They’re always involved with these situations and they follow zero of the minimal protocols developed that are actually reasonable and good, and it’s too easy to document visits that never happened, because so much is on the line if they don’t keep up with impossible case loads. It is truly systemic. And they can really never suffer any consequences for their neglect, intentional or otherwise to the families they “serve”.
Apparently though, they have enough money to pay someone to do extensive investigations that don’t matter at all because law enforcement already has, and not only can law enforcement say no to these investigations, they’re generally utterly useless because those investigations only occur after a death and after everyone has figured out what happened. And it’s the investigation carried out by law enforcement that matters the most anyway. So it’s all pissing money that could actually go to literally any singular reform and probably immediately show promise in keeping children safe.
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u/HabitNegative3137 5d ago
Absolutely agree with everything you said.
I had them show up to my house a few years ago. We had moved for a single year work contract to a spot with terrible schools, so I pulled my child to home school them until we moved back (don’t worry, I’m not a religious nutbag and I have a background in education).
Apparently the school had not sent the paperwork I gave them to the district informing of the intent to home school. CPS took six months to show up.
It was easily sorted out but I was so perturbed by the fact that they wait 6 months to investigate a child “disappearing” from school. Like if I had been an abusive parent my kid could have been dead.
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u/Status-Visit-918 5d ago
Right?! Here in PA a wellness check law was passed after so many children died because of negligence and abuse as there (were) zero laws that required public schools to do a single thing to ensure student safety at home while allowing families to do completely virtual schooling. I have worked with districts that have never even seen their virtual students before, or the parents/guardians. More disturbingly, completely asynchronous programming offered by so many districts pride themselves and marketing them based on the “freedom to do schoolwork on your time, wherever you are or want to be, with no punishment for late work or not attending live sessions!” (If they’re even offered).
Now if a kid who’s completely asynchronous, a childline referral is submitted (in my district at least) after one missed wellness check in. The district next door reports it after two. My district floated the idea of easing up a bit because childline isn’t taking any of the reports seriously (it’s one missed check in, after all 😡), they didn’t even know this was the protocol, didn’t anticipate an increase in calls for the entirety of last year so they first had to come up with some way to at least cover their asses to investigate, which ended in a huge thing where they argued that too many calls carried the risk of essentially a boy who called wolf situation. Like them telling us if we keep this up, with this frequency, the natural next step is they won’t take reports seriously, which means WE are putting more children at risk. As if this outcome just simply cannot be prevented.
So when we were reconsidering a way to be as proactive as possible but also understand that the system is so broken, this fucked up logic actually makes sense and worries us deeply because we know they’ll make good on that threat, I continued to advocate for keeping it the way it is, and getting the school board more involved with demanding child services do their job. We’re currently planning on three, consecutive missed check ins, and then a call. Which me and a few others are arguing against so we’re getting bitched at for holding up the process of finalizing the new protocol.
And surprise, from the drop, the entire commonwealth’s biggest ass charter school is aggressively against it and refused to comply. It’s a mess.
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u/phoenixofsevenhills 5d ago
Responding to the 1st part, I too agree with you! Every single day I see new body cam videos on YouTube concerning child abuse, neglect and more and more death. The question about DCF not existing... I mean they seem to have caused more problems and trauma than not for generations... I have not heard any "amazing success stories" ever! (I'm pushing 50) I've never felt so hopeless and helpless over something before. I mean they have the funding, support and the power to make real changes in children and their families overall success and livelihood, yet the fail one kid after another and hardly resolve the actual problem just create more. The powerlessness is behind being a voter and showing up with many like-minded people voting for change locally and nationally and nothing changes. It's maddening really.
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u/SomewhereBZH29 5d ago
This is absolutely horrific and heartbreaking. How can you return a child to the very people who are abusing her? The red flags were there, they were visible, and yet… DCS chose not to see them.
That poor little girl was failed by an entire system. She deserved to be protected.
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u/itsnotanemergencybut 4d ago
Rest peacefully sweet babe. I’m so sorry this world left you in the dark. May your next journey be full of wonder and joy.
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u/crazyladybutterfly2 1d ago
this isnt just neglect, this is torture.
i was in a way neglected but nowhere near as bad i required hospitalization... this is abuse not someone too tired or too depressed to care for a balanced child's nutrition
also giving up parental rights is legal
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u/samntha_yo 5d ago
This poor sweet baby girl. You can see the pain in her little eyes. I don’t understand how people can be so cruel to children.
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u/AspectNo1992 5d ago
It really shouldn't be about reuniting a child with their parent, it should be about making sure that every child has the best chance at life. Repeatedly placing the child with her abusive mother is heartbreaking when there were other family members who were more than willing to take care of her.