St. Pete 5-year-old, hospitalized after abuse, dies of injuries, police say
A 5-year-old St. Petersburg girl died over the weekend of injuries police said she suffered as a result of child abuse, the St. Petersburg Police Department said Monday.
Cynthia Green was hospitalized Feb. 22 after a fire rescue crew responded to an early-morning call at a St. Petersburg home and found her unconscious with a head injury, police said. Her father, 32-year-old William Green, was initially charged with two counts of aggravated child abuse. He now faces a murder charge.
Green also faces a charge of child neglect. He has been held without bail in the Pinellas County jail since Feb. 22.
Cynthia had “severe head trauma and fresh injuries to her body,” police said last week, and she was covered in scars, which included bite marks. She underwent surgery last week and was in critical but stable condition for a time, officers said. Police did not specify her cause of death.
Green was the only adult caregiver in the home when Cynthia was injured, police said. There were no other children in the house.
Jail records show that Green has one prior felony arrest in Pinellas County, on a 2007 child abuse charge. He was 18 years old at the time. Because of privacy laws around child abuse cases, it was not immediately clear from court records what the outcome of that case was, but jail records show Green was released on his own recognizance in that case, and he does not appear in state prison records.
