A toddler was found alone with her mother’s corpse inside a homeless shelter, and authorities believe she was there with her for five days.
Workers found 15-month-old Lyric Laboy under a bed close to the mother’s body at the East River Family Center on July 25.
According to the city Medical Examiner’s office, her mother, Shelbi Westlake, 26, had died of an accidental overdose.
Lyric was “covered in human feces” and badly dehydrated. Workers rushed her to the hospital, and now her father, Quraan Laboy, 31, has filed a petition in a Manhattan Supreme Court. He plans on suing the city and the Department of Homeless Services for $5 million in damages, the New York Post reported.
The agency says Lyric was not left alone for five days. However, it didn’t say how long it was.
The agency claims that the incident is currently being investigated, the agency claims, adding the shelter is now required to conduct same-night wellness checks for all residents who don’t sign the nightly roster.
“I don’t know how long she will suffer from this. She has a lot of separation anxiety,” Laboy said of his daughter, who lost seven pounds during the harrowing ordeal and now hates to leave his side.
The child is still traumatized by the tragedy. The child has been “routinely slapping her dad while he’s sleeping to make sure he’s alive,” Laboy’s attorney, Seth Harris, stated.
Westlake and her daughter lived in an apartment-like unit at the shelter at 325 East 104th St. located in Manhattan, said Harris. The parents separated, and the mom and baby had spent about three or four months at the shelter.
According to legal papers, no one noticed the mother had died until another resident reported a “foul odor” coming from her unit.
The mom had last signed in at the shelter on July 19, six days before her body was discovered, said Allison Keenan, another of Laboy’s attorneys.
“It’s amazing that she’s alive,” Harris added.
“Allowing an infant to remain with her dead mother for five days unnoticed not only highlights the indifference and lack of humanity shown to those most in need but exhibits complete malfeasance by the City of New York and Department of Homeless Services,” Keenan said.
Six months have passed, and Lyric has regained the weight she lost, but she cries out for her mother almost every night, her father said.
“She always wakes up in the middle of the night, she’s kicking, she’s fighting, saying, ‘Mommy,’ I look at her and I just start tearing up sometimes,” he said.
When she was found, she had a “horrific” diaper rash that has not fully healed, he continued.
The Manhattan man said since he had to take his daughter full time, he had to leave his job at the New York City Housing Authority.
“I had to drop everything. She’s my number one priority right now,” he said. “My daughter’s gotta deal with this mentally for the rest of her life.”
