Kaitlyn Yozviak died at the age of 12 from cardiac arrest from severe anemia on August 26 in Ivery, Georgia, United States. Now his parents face charges of child murder and cruelty.
Authorities believe that a “severe infestation” of lice may have caused acute anemia that caused death. Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Ryan Hilton testified that Kaitlyn, at the time of his death, had the “most serious” lice infestation he has ever seen, the New York Post reported.
Investigations determined kaitlyn was subjected to “excessive physical pain due to medical negligence” before he died. The girl was pronounced dead at a Milledgeville hospital on August 26 after her mother Katie Horton, 37, called 911 to report that her daughter was unre responding. Agent Hilton considered that repeated bites of lice, which they believe occurred for at least three years, reduced their iron levels in the blood, which may have been behind their severe anemia.
When authorities arrived at the Yozviak’s home in August, they found lice all over the mattress, stuffed animals and other furniture in the child’s room as the authorities said.
Neighbors told the agents that they hadn’t seen Kaitlyn play in the neighborhood in over a month. Documents from the Georgia Division of Family and Child Services (DFCS) show that the girl’s two brothers were taken from Horton and Yozviak’s home due to unsanitary conditions. But the end of the child may have been completely different, as at first her mother had determined to give the girl up for adoption in 2008, because she did not love the girl and was with her husband in a precarious situation. That’s why Michele and Dwyatt Creamer were designated as the baby’s adoptive parents. The Creamers already had everything ready to receive the baby at home, even they chose her name and took pictures with her in the hospital when she was born. At the last minute, however, Katie Horton changed her mind and kept the baby.
Dwyatt Creamer with newborn Kaitlyn Photo: Archives
“She looked at me that day and said, ‘This baby is supposed to be yours. I don’t want this baby, but I feel like I have to,” said Michele the adopted mother.
Michele with Kaityn Photo: Archives
Then the Creamers never heard about the baby again, until they read the case on the news. “I said, ‘That was my Kaitlyn, that was my baby,’ and, of course, I cried again,” the child’s family received several complaints about unsanitary housing conditions at different times. In 2018 a call alerted the DFCS that the house was “infested with insects, with excessive cats and dangerous conditions.” On that occasion the girl was sent to live with her grandmother, but within 6 days she returned to her parents’ house. Now Wilkinson County Superior Court Justice Brenda Trammell ruled that there is enough evidence for the counts of murder against the child’s parents to be filed with a grand jury.
