On December 29, 2018, a Texas teenager who kept kiddie porn in his phone was allowed to tend to a 5 month-old foster infant named Elizabeth Henson, in foster care, alone. The next morning, the child was dead.
Not only was the teen, Christian Richmond, allowed to care for the infant, he was also caring for the dead infant's brother and three other children, two of which were Richmond’s siblings.
Richmond told the police, he fed the infant and eventually fell asleep with her on the couch, with the girl face up on his chest. Richmond’s mother, Nicole Parker, the recognized foster parent in charge, was gone all night.
When Richmond woke up, the child wasn’t breathing and had gone purple. By then, the next morning his mother had returned and the two of them attempted CPR but it was too late.
An autopsy on the baby ruled the death an accident, calling the cause of death “asphyxia due to wedging” a term to describe when someone suffocates from either lying face down or being lodged between a sleeping partner or surface. The medical examiner’s report supported law enforcement’s narrative of events.
Natalie Parker was arrested for causing injury to a child and abandoning or endangering a child. A few days later, her son, Christian Richmond, was arrested for storing videos of kiddie porn on his cell phone.
Parker was hired as a verified foster home keeper through a subcontractor called Kingdom Kids. That was in March of March 2017. Over the next 9 months, state officials site Parker five times for "possible minimum standards violations" and once for leaving her children unsupervised.
It took the death of Elizabeth Henson to get her license revoked.