A nurse was charged in her abused child’s death in 2019. She lost her license Sept. 1
Almost two years after 7-year-old Samayah Emmanuel died with what an arrest form called “gaping wounds” and 11 months after her mother, a nurse, was charged in the child’s death, the state revoked Gina Emmanuel’s nursing license.
The State of Florida’s Board of Nursing permanently revoked Emmanuel’s nursing license on Sept. 1. Emmanuel’s license had been suspended since Nov. 15, 2019, a month after her arrest on charges related to Samayah’s death.
Emmanuel, 51, remains in Miami-Dade Corrections Metrowest Detention Center. Online court records say Emmanuel has posted $222,500 of her $250,000 bond and faces two counts of child neglect with great bodily harm, two counts of child abuse with great bodily harm and one count of aggravated manslaughter against a child.
Samayah’s life ended sometime before Nov. 3, 2018. An arrest report and the Florida Department of Health’s emergency suspension order (ESO) of Emmanuel’s license say that’s when Samaya was found unconscious in Emmanuel’s North Miami-Dade home.
The ESO said that in October, Samayah began having “flu-like symptoms, including severe coughing, wheezing, fainting, hearing loss, trouble standing and walking and incontinence.” Pneumonia and sepsis stemming from an untreated flu killed the child, the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner said.
And, it went untreated, the arrest report and ESO say, because the nurse knew taking Samayah to a doctor would bring to light her abuses of Samayah and three other children (ages 13, 7 and 5) she had adopted.
The alleged abuse and the marks left
The surviving children, bearing marks left by beatings and burns, told investigators that Emmanuel beat them with belts, a brush and a back scratcher, made them stand for hours as punishment and used the stove to burn hands and fingers.
Once, the kids told investigators, Samayah and one of the other kids were hungry when they woke up from sleeping on the living room floor (another punishment). The two went to the kitchen and ate bread. An “enraged” Emmanuel said the break was meant only for her biological child, a 24-year-old with Down syndrome. She woke the other two kids up, made them watch her beat Samayah and the other hungry child, then held their hands on the stove until they burned, reports said.
During the autopsy, the arrest report said, the medical examiner’s office saw “signs of physical abuse on her forehead, abdomen, arms, back, both of her legs, as well as the burns on both of her hands and fingers. Further, [Samayah] had gaping open wounds on the top part of both of her hands and both of her knees.”
A Child Protection Team doctor said “the open wounds were so significant, they would’ve required a specialized wound team for proper treatment, which [Emmanuel] never sought.”
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