Child’s death caused by blunt injury
Published 12:00 am Thursday, December 8, 2005
WINTON – The autopsy of a two-year old Hertford County girl who died this past July under suspicious circumstances is back.
“The cause of death wasn’t from falling off a bed,” Hertford County Sheriff Juan Vaughan said.
According to Vaughan, the autopsy ruled the young girl died from a severe blunt force injury to her head.
Travis Lamont Williams and Sherikka Shenelle Beale brought the two-year old girl to the Roanoke-Chowan Hospital in July with bruises and a fractured skull. The girl was unresponsive when she arrived at the hospital that night and was then transported to Pitt Memorial Hospital, where she died the next day.
Following an investigation, the Hertford County Sheriff’s Office charged Williams with murder and two counts of felony child abuse in the death of the girl. Beale was also charged with two counts of felony child abuse.
Williams’s bond, initially set at $75,000, was revoked following the murder charge. Beale’s cash bond was set at $150,000 after she was charged with the two counts of felony child abuse.
Williams and Beale informed law enforcement officials they were watching the girl the night she was brought to the hospital and claimed she had fallen off a bed.