A mother and her boyfriend accused of killing her 5-year-old daughter were indicted in Monroe County Tuesday, according to Channel 2 Action News.
Amanda Hendrickson and Roderick Buckner were indicted for murder and aggravated battery in the death of Heaven Woods, the news station said.
The case involved an investigation by the state Division of Family and Children Services began with a report by a school employee of Hendrickson kicking the child.
The state social worker closed the case after Hendrickson denied the charge and was backed up by the child and a friend despite a history of complaints involving Hendrickson to the agency.
Details of the case, which some advocates for children called a textbook example of ineffective casework, emerged from a summary released Tuesday by DFCS in response to an open records request from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“It is very, very concerning when a child dies when there is an open investigation. You can’t get any more wrong than that,” Kenneth Joe, former director of the Fulton County DFCS office, told The AJC last June.
Heaven Woods died of blows to the abdomen weeks after the state supposedly began investigating evidence that she was being beaten by adults in her home, an official case summary obtained by The AJC reveals.
On May 20, EMS workers in Monroe County responded to a call from Buckner’s home on Brookwood Drive saying that Heaven was unresponsive. An autopsy revealed that she had died of blunt force trauma to the abdomen. It also had evidence of other injuries, some fresh and some old.
The report in May was the ninth time the family had been reported to DFCS since 2009, according to the file. While in jail, Hendrickson gave birth to another daughter. The baby was placed into state custody.
Family members often saw mysterious injuries to the child the mother tried to explain away.
Hendrickson once told a grandmother that the knot on the girl’s head happened when her clumsy daughter fell on a coffee table.
When Heaven had bruises in the shape of a hand on her throat, the mother said the girl was autistic and tried to choke herself.
Family members also recall at least one instance in which the mother lost her temper, grabbed the hair on Heaven’s head and lifted her clear off the floor.
“I wish I would have stepped up and done something,” 21-year-old Ashley Coursey, Hendrickson’s half-sister, told The AJC last year.
On Tuesday, attempts to reach District Attorney Richard Milam for confirmation of the indictments were unsuccessful. Their arraignment date is reportedly 9 a.m. on April 16.
Staff writer Craig Schneider contributed to this report.
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