Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2005 | 11:10 a.m.
The transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that led to the indictment of the couple who allegedly so severely neglected a 2-year-old girl that she starved to death in filthy living conditions indicate that the situation at the family's trailer home was even more horrific than has been previously reported.
On Aug. 30, Metro Police Abuse and Neglect Specialist Cynthia Sauchak gave a Clark County grand jury a detailed account of the squalor she found June 29 at the mobile home on North Walnut Street where 25-year-old Jack Richardson and his girlfriend, 28-year-old Charlene Snyder, lived with four children, all younger than 6 and all of whom were found to have been suffering from long-term, severe lice infestation and malnourishment.
Sauchak told the grand jury that when she got about 6 feet from the outside of the trailer she was hit with the smell of feces and when she walked in the front door she found a home "completely cluttered with debris, broken glass at the edges, animal feces, garbage, partially eaten food, rotting food."
She said although every other inch of the trailer was completely covered in such debris, there was one room that was clean -- Snyder and Richardson's bedroom. "What was striking to me was their room was not in the same condition as the rest of the trailer," Sauchak said.
She said the room was free of feces, insect infestation, garbage and other debris that filled the rest of the trailer. Snyder "didn't take a lot of responsibility for the condition of the home or the condition of the children," Sauchak said. "And she expressed, although she did have tears in her eyes, she did express that it was her belief that Adacelli should have died young because of her condition."
Dr. Gary Telgenhoff of the Clark County coroner's office explained to the grand jury that Adacelli's umbilical cord had been twisted in the womb and that deprived her of oxygen while she was developing in utero. He said the complication ultimately caused Adacelli to get cerebral palsy.
He said while the complication was "no one's fault, it just happens," he was troubled by the differences in Adacelli's health in the hospital after her birth compared with when she was released, based on the child's medical records.
The doctor the records indicated that the child's weight and height gains would come to an abrupt halt upon being released from the hospital and into the care of Charlene Snyder.
Telgenhoff said before being released from the hospital, Adacelli's birth weight was "acceptable" and in fact the "child was gaining some weight as I recall before being released from the hospital."
"Soon thereafter the child began to not progress with weight and height, and it was soon after that she was below the fifth percent, actually below the third percentile. It was way off the chart for a child of that age. This continued until her death."
Telgenhoff said even before he weighed Adacelli at the morgue he knew just from looking at her "that this child has suffered from growth retardation most likely due to malnutrition."
The doctor said Adacelli also suffered a "very severe diaper rash" that was more like "an ulcerative like rash where the skin is breaking down, and it's obviously been a long time since anything was done about this particular diaper rash."
He said his external examination of Adacelli also revealed dried urine and feces on her body. The autopsy found Adacelli's stomach contained no more than 10 milliliters of a "mucous-like material" that might have contained a "fleck or two of material that was reminiscent of some type of food particle."
Telgenhoff told the grand jury that Adacelli "had the most concentrated collection of lice and nits (lice eggs) I've ever seen in a kid's hair." "You could see it (the lice) from across the room," Telgenhoff said.
"Now thumbing through the hair there with gloves on there are numerous, numerous insect bites on the scalp and you could see the insects actually alive." The coroner said Adacelli was "very emaciated, cachectic, wasting, wasted child."
The doctor concluded the manner of Adacelli's death was a homicide caused by cachexia due to malnutrition due to child neglect over a period of several months.
A longtime friend of Snyder's, Kelli Cruz, told the grand jury Adacelli and her two sisters -- ages 5 and 3 -- were locked in one bedroom and only allowed to leave "when they needed the restroom, if that."
Cruz said Snyder's treatment of the girls got even worse after Snyder gave birth to Richardson's son a little less than a year before Adacelli died. The couple then basically totally neglected Adacelli, Cruz alleged.
"There was nothing towards that baby (Adacelli)," Cruz said. "That baby (Adacelli) was, it was just left in the back room to cry. Just it was, all the attention was based on the baby, on baby boy."
But the 11-month-old boy had apparently also been severely neglected, according to another doctor who testified before the grand jury.
Dr. Neha Mehta, pediatrician at Sunrise Children's Hospital in their child abuse and neglect program, treated the boy and Snyder's 3-year-old daughter.
The boy had "a very thin, emaciated, kind of wasted appearance," Mehta said. "His face, his eyes were sunken inward. He had some bruising that I noted to his face, particularly on the left side of the face, as well as the right side of his face.
He did not smile or look around or interact. He was extremely quiet." Mehta said the boy weighed just under 12 pounds during the examination. She said the average weight for an 11-month-year-old boy is roughly 22 pounds.
"He wasn't meeting the developmental milestones I would expect an 11-month-old child to," Mehta said. "His weight was the average weight of a 2-month-old child, not an 11-month-old child."
As she moved forward with her examination of the boy, she began to document "muscle wasting, significant decrease in tone and muscle strength." "He did not have a lot of strength," Mehta said.
"So in terms of if you tried to lift him or pick him up, he would do nothing to help you. He would slip through your hands. He didn't have any shoulder strength.
"He couldn't sit on his own. He could sit briefly if you put his hands in front of him to tripod himself. He had no ability to walk, crawl, and he was not interactive."
The doctor said that after the boy was admitted to the hospital he had no difficulty gaining weight and that "he did initially respond to food as if he was unfamiliar with it."
She said the boy's speedy weight gain in the hospital was suggestive that he previously was "not being provided with food."
"When we stuck him for blood, he did not cry," Mehta said. "His muscles were, you know, skin was fleshy and loose on parts of his body that you would expect to see musculature on." Mehta said Snyder's 3-year-old daughter had previously been treated for a significant case of head lice while at Child Haven, but she still had lice eggs attached to her hair, causing the child to scratch a lot during Mehta's evaluation.
Cruz said she lent Snyder and Richardson money and on several occasions even spent six hours at a time cleaning the trailer, but the cleanliness would only last two to three days before it returned to ruin. Sauchak said Snyder seemed "rather oblivious to the poor state of the home and when that was addressed with her she essentially blamed that on other factors."
The testimony led the grand jury to Snyder and her boyfriend, Richardson, on charges of second-degree murder and four counts of abuse and neglect in connection with Adacelli's death and the treatment of her siblings.
Snyder and Richardson have pleaded not guilty to all charges and are scheduled to stand trial on Feb. 6 before District Judge David Wall.
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