Brooklyn father arrested, charged in death of 2-year-old daughter
A Brooklyn father was arrested and charged in the death of his 2-year-old daughter after he told police he punched her repeatedly in the back of the head, prosecutors said Sunday.
Robert Wright, 33, was slapped with charges of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, assault and endangering the welfare of a child after the girl, Aniyah Wyatt-Wright, was treated at Long Island Jewish Hospital last Wednesday, police said and court records show.
The city Medical Examiner deemed Aniyah’s death suspicious after determining Aniyah had a traumatic brain injury in the same place Wright said he’d punched her, police and prosecutors said.
He was taken into custody two days later, cops said.
A neighbor in the Brownsville building on Osborn St. near Hegeman Ave. where Aniyah lived with Wright and her mother said nothing had ever appeared out of the ordinary.
“The family was very nice to me and my kids. They always said hi,” said the woman, who did not want to be named. “I never saw anything wrong with them. The father never came off as violent. I never even heard a domestic dispute between them.”
Aniyah’s mother has not been back to the apartment since her boyfriend was arrested, the woman told the Daily News.
“I’m a mother myself, so this has been draining,” she said. “I saw when they took the baby in the ambulance and since then, I haven’t been in the building a lot since it happened. It’s heartbreaking.”
Following an arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court, Wright was held on a $1 million bond or $100,000 cash, records show.
