Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2005 | 10:56 a.m.
Parents of a 2-year-old girl who died from malnourishment and neglect in June had allowed the family's mobile home to become filled with garbage and rotting food, and the four children in the home suffered from insect bites and other symptoms of neglect, according to an arrest warrant issued for the parents on Monday.
The squalid condition of the trailer and the apparent neglect of the children were noted by authorities about a year after Child Protective Services had closed its case into the family and declared the conditions of the home acceptable.
Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Joe Bonaventure Jr. on Monday issued an arrest warrant for Charlene Snyder and her husband, Jack Richardson, who are charged in the death of Adacelli Louise Snyder, the toddler found dead in the family's mobile home on June 29.
Snyder and Richardson, who are not in custody, are scheduled to appear before Family Court judge Gerald Hardcastle today for a hearing to determine the custody status of one or more of the family's three children, said Michael Sommermeyer, spokesman for the district court.
Snyder and Richardson are expected to be arrested if they show up for the custody hearing, said Metro spokesman Jose Montoya. He said that the court's bailiffs and Metro officers who regularly work at the courthouse would take the couple into custody.
The Clark County Coroner's office previously ruled that Adacelli died from cachexia, or general wasting away due to malnutrition and neglect.
Adacelli also had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy.
Snyder and Richardson are charged with second-degree murder and multiple counts of child abuse or neglect, according to a copy of the complaint.
In any case in which abuse is alleged to have caused the death of a child, the District Attorney's office has the discretion to file first-degree murder charges. However, to get a conviction under that charge, prosecutors would have to prove that the killing was premeditated. Clark County District Attorney David Roger said.
"We didn't think we could prove the elements of murder in the first degree" in Adacelli's case, Roger said.
When authorities found Adacelli in the family's mobile home at 1832 N. Walnut Ave. she was covered with insect bites and had bruising and abrasions on her stomach, back, thigh and face, according to the arrest warrant.
She had sores on her buttocks and had an "extensive amount" of dried excrement on her, according to the arrest warrant.
Adacelli and her three siblings were also living in "extremely filthy" conditions, according to the warrant. The mobile home was filled with garbage, rotting food and animal and human feces, according to the warrant.
After Adacelli's death, Child and Protective Services officials removed the remaining three children from the home and placed them into the custody of the state.
Clark County Child Protective Services had monitored the family from 2003 to 2004 after the agency received two referrals alleging poor conditions of the home and "weight loss on the part of Adacelli Snyder," according to the arrest warrant.
Susan Klein-Rothschild, director of the Clark County Department of Family Services, called the case "tragic" and said the agency needs to look into "what happened between June 2004 and now, when things went terribly wrong."
CPS worked with the family from July 2003 to June 11, 2004, according to the warrant.
CPS originally was alerted to the case by two referrals received in July 2003 alleging "poor conditions of the home; weight loss on the part of Adacelli Snyder; Charlene Snyder not following through on available resources for her children (Special Children's Clinics; WIC)," according to the warrant.
Klein-Rothschild said that during the year CPS worked with the family, a social worker worked directly with Charlene to improve the conditions of the children and the household and brought in people within the community to support the family.
"Great progress had been made in terms of addressing the factors that were risks to the safety of the children," she said.
Klein-Rothschild couldn't account for the conditions that were discovered in the mobile home when Adacelli was discovered dead. But she said that CPS closed the case on the family because the issues of concern had been addressed and it received no additional complaints.
CPS doesn't follow up after a case has been closed unless it receives further complaints, she said.
"We have no basis to intrude on the family in the future" without additional complaints, she said.
Snyder's aunt Laura Dunlap said that Snyder had a tough childhood and was institutionalized for a time. She said it gave Snyder experience in dealing with government agencies.
"She knows how to play the system," Dunlap said.
She described Snyder as unequipped for motherhood though she had four children with various fathers.
"You have to take a driving test to get a driver's license, but you can give birth at any time," Dunlap said.
"And honestly, I do feel bad for Charlene. I fell very bad for her."
She said some of the family had offered to care for Adacelli. Much of the family, she said, did not know just how bad conditions were in Snyder's home.
"I learned so much just in the last couple of weeks how bad those kids had it," Dunlap said. "It was horrible, horrible."
Charlene Snyder and Jack Richardson are also charged with neglecting and abusing Adacelli's siblings -- a 5-year-old girl, a 4-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy. The arrest warrant stated that the children suffered from head lice and other signs of abuse.
A child abuse and neglect scan conducted on the siblings by medical staff at Sunrise Children's Hospital on July 1 noted that the 1-year-old had significant developmental delays and was kept at the hospital for eight days because of his physical condition, according to the arrest warrant.
But it appeared that Adacelli was the most neglected of the children received some of the worst neglect in the family, according to the warrant. Her two older sisters told officials at Child Haven theday after they were removed from the home that Adacelli "wanted to eat," according to the warrant.
The 5-year-old girl told officials that "Adacelli died because she wanted to eat," and that Adacelli died while the two older girls were eating. She told officials that the siblings were usually fed cereal like "Tasty O's," according to the report.
In her statements to officials on July 29, Charlene Snyder said that she and her husband were unemployed and supported themselves from Adacelli's Social Security check, which came to $579 a month, according to the warrant. Snyder's mother also provided some assistance to the family, according to the warrant.
Snyder told officials that she was having plumbing and other issues with the trailer and hadn't paid rent for three months. They were facing eviction, according to the warrant.
In her statement, Snyder confirmed that she had missed several appointments with the Adacelli's pediatrician and neurologist because of transportation problems.
"She admitted to missing appointments 'six to seven months ago (to Adacelli's neurologist and pediatrician)" because she '..had no transportation to get down there.' She also did not explore transportation options such as asking her mother or taking the bus," according to the warrant.
Snyder also allegedly did not follow recommended dietary requirements for Adacelli, who was described previously by an assistant Clark County Coroner as having a "skin and bones appearance."
In her statement to police, Snyder allegedly said that a pediatrician told her to provide baby food, cereal and whole milk to "fatten" Adacelli up, and that the infant should be brought back to the pediatrician to have her weight checked, according to the warrant. However, Snyder missed that appointment, according to the warrant.
She said that Adacelli's bruises on her right eye were self-inflicted, but could not provide an explanation for the bruises on the infant's body, according to the warrant.
Snyder denied that Adacelli had been dropped or sustained injuries, according to the warrant.
Neighbors and others told officials that the conditions within the Snyder house was "deplorable," according to the warrant.
Anne Hill, the manager of the Acacia Mobile Home Park where the family lived, told officials that she managed to get into the mobile home in June and found "trash everywhere, cloths everywhere ... cat poop on the ground and in the baby's room the carpet smelled terrible," the warrant stated.
Hill said that an eviction notice had been issued to be effective on July 12. When an investigator asked Hill why the rent might not have been paid, she replied "she had seen 'them' at the corner store gambling and playing 'on the machines,"' according to the warrant.
Another family friend, Sheryl Tucker, told officials that Snyder's trailer had been infested with cockroaches and other insects "for over a year," according to the warrant.
Tucker also reported seeing bruises on Adacelli's forehead, and eventually stopped going to the trailer because it was too disturbing," according to the warrant.
In one of her most recent visits, in December or January, Tucker told officials that she had went into a bedroom of the mobile home to check on Adacelli, and found the child in "this little pallet of blankets on the floor -- it almost looked like a dog bed to me, and it really disturbed me," according to the warrant.
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