3-Year-Old Girl Weighing Just 11 Pounds Dies of Starvation While in Parents' Care

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A 3-year-old girl with special needs is dead and the city of Philadelphia is facing one horrific child abuse investigation. Doctors say when Nathalyz Rivera was rushed to the hospital, she was just 11 pounds and covered in bites. She didn't make it. She'd been starved ... to death.

Now all four of Nathalyz' siblings, including her 3-year-old twin, have been taken from their parents, and those parents -- 30-year-old Carlos Rivera and Carmen Rameriz, 27, have been taken into police custody. There are no charges yet, but considering doctors say the little girl's starvation was akin to the treatment of prisoners in concentration camps, it's safe to say there will be a raft coming down the pike.

The confusing thing: who to charge. And with what.

According to police, Carlos Rivera found little Nathalyz unresponsive and he called Carmen, who showed up with her boyfriend and rushed the 3-year-old, who was born blind and with Down syndrome, to the hospital. She was pronounced dead there.

At the risk of sounding reasonable, what did they expect would happen?

A child abuse specialist familiar with the case told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the girl’s condition “doesn’t happen to a child in a couple of weeks. Generally, it is a process that takes months and months, or even years of neglect.”

Add to that the fact that this poor little girl's body was reportedly covered in insect and rodent bites (as were the bodies of her siblings, who were otherwise relatively OK), and I ask again: what did these parents EXPECT?

For their daughter to be right as rain? For a miracle?

This poor innocent child had been starved. For months or even a year. She was put through unspeakable torture.

A child.

A child with special needs no less.

A 3-year-old who needed her Mommy and Daddy.

She should have been taken to a doctor before all this, not at the end. She should have been protected all along; not suddenly at the end, when it looked like she might be dead.

Cops say Carmen "came and went" from Carlos' home, from the home where Nathalyz lived, and she'd seen the little girl recently, so it looks likely that both parents will be facing some sort of charges -- regardless of Mom's last ditch attempt to seek some sort of medical treatment for the little girl.

What do you make of their decisions at the end? Do you have any sympathy for these parents?

Image via Philadelphia Police Department