Bronx mom charged with killing 6-year-old daughter hung little girl in closet and beat her: prosecutors
Horrific new details of the death of 6-year-old Jelayah Eason emerged Friday as the Bronx girl’s mother, Lynija Eason Kumar, was accused of hanging the child in a closet with her hands and feet tied and beating her with a hard object, according to the criminal complaint.
Cops responding to a 12th-floor apartment in NYCHA’s Forest Houses last year discovered little Jelayah Eason unconscious with bruising and trauma to her wrists and chest, said police sources. She was pronounced dead at Lincoln Hospital.
According to the criminal complaint, Jelayah’s mother hung her in a closet with her hands and feet tied and “repeatedly striking her daughter about the body with a hard object and leaving her hanging in said closet.” The mother was arraigned and remanded on Friday afternoon, said a spokesman for the Bronx District Attorney’s office.
The little girl’s autopsy, cited in the complaint listed other horrifying details – said Jelayah was found to be covered in bruises and scars, both new and healing, with ligature marks on her wrist, and she was extremely underweight.
Kumar, 27, was arrested Thursday and charged with murder and manslaughter, police said.
“Her cause of death was determined to be Child Abuse Including Restraint (Suspension), Positional Asphyxia, Blunt Force Injuries of Multiple Ages, and Malnourishment,” read the court filing.
Two other children, an 8-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl, were found in the squalid home and also showed signs of abuse and neglect.
The younger girl had “a long, discolored scar to the right side of her waist” and a “widespread discolored rash to her inner thighs and buttocks,” a 2023 court document said.
The boy had “countless small lacerations in various stages of healing on his back, scalp, arms and legs,” the complaint said. Cops also said he had a cut to his forehead and a deep healing cut on his scalp.
Following Jelayah’s death, Eason Kumar was charged with endangering the welfare of the two other children. Both children were taken into custody by the Administration for Children’s Services in the wake of their sister’s death. Eason Kumar was granted supervised release without bail on those charges.
“I take care of my kids by myself,” Eason told cops, according to the complaint in the endangerment case. “No other adults live in my apartment with me and my kids.”
Neighbors recalled the family’s residence as a house of horrors, with Eason constantly screaming at Jelayah and her siblings.
One neighbor described hearing howls from the apartment before cops found the little girl with bruising and trauma to her chest and neck.
Court documents described an insect-infested apartment that reeked of rotted food, feces and urine, and cops who responded to a 911 call observed soiled clothing and linen and open containers of food stacked up into piles and covering the floors of the apartment.
