Santa Clara County releases timeline in death of 8 year old girl

It is a shocking case of child neglect, which resulted in the death of an eight-year-old San Jose girl. Now, while that child's parents are awaiting trial on criminal charges, the county is out with its first full public accounting of reports to the agency, which is supposed to protect children. KTVU's Mark Serra, live tonight in San Jose with more on the story. Mark. Well, Mike Claudine, the reports to the county's Department of Family and Children's Services started coming in two and a half years before the death of Aurora. And in every case, the county, when it went out to investigate, found those cases to be either unfounded or inconclusive. It was May 13th of this year when eight-year-old Aurora Williams was taken by ambulance from the family home on Lancelot Lane in East San Jose after the family called 911 because the girl was unresponsive. The coroner ruled the death a homicide, citing a severe asthma attack with medical neglect as a contributing factor. I don't know how you sleep at night, but it It impacts me. At a committee meeting Thursday afternoon, supervisors who oversee the department made clear their belief that DCFS did not see the big picture in Aurora's case. So we're waiting for another child to die so that we can continue to improve our system because we won't do it proactively. The series of calls started in September of 2023. The county was called for reports of children's clothes, smelling of urine, being dirty, one child wanting to reportedly put a gun to their head. The results of the county's investigation, inconclusive. Three months later in December. Another complaint of dog feces in the living room and cockroaches in the kitchen. On a school bus, one child was observed having difficulty breathing and appeared to be unconscious. The result, again, inconclusive. April of 2024, a report of lice, children feeling itchy and struggling with hygiene in peer isolation at school. Inconclusive. And just 10 days later, another report that a child reported having not eaten in two days and appeared to be thin. And in February of last year, Aurora Woods. Williams was taken to a doctor. Staff reported a cockroach was observed crawling out from the child's back and the child appeared to be malnourished. The investigation result, unfounded. Here's how a member of the public summed it up. The bottom line is there should have been a response that removed the child from the home. And this is not the first recent case raising concerns about DCFS. Just a month before Aurora died, two-year-old Jackson Juarez died after the county placed him with a relative who had earlier faced felony child endangerment charges. And in 2023, infant Phoenix Castro died after ingesting fentanyl. We absolutely do. Take every single loss of a child's life seriously. Now, it's clear here today that this committee did not feel that the county's own social services agency connected the dots in the case of Aurora, looked at these cases individually and not as a totality over this two and a half year period. Of course, the question came up, well, what's next? How are we going to make sure this doesn't happen again? One of the things they are considering is creating a blue ribbon commission. This was done in Los Angeles County in similar circumstances. This would be a group that would meet for exactly nine months and report back on what kind of changes could be made to make sure that there aren't future cases like Aurora. There's a lot of news out there that will be unfolding in the days and years ahead. Mike Cluddy. Difficult story. Mark Serra live tonight in San Jose. Mark, thank you.