The aunt of a 4-year-old boy who starved to death in his parents’ Harlem apartment is suing the city’s child-welfare agency, her lawyers said on Thursday. The suit charges that the agency was on notice that children in the family were being underfed and that it negligently failed to prevent the boy’s death.
The agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, had had several contacts with the family of the boy, Jahmeik Modlin, over the years and closed the family’s most recent case in 2022.
Jahmeik’s parents, Nytavia Ragsdale, 26, and Laron Modlin, 25, have been charged with second-degree manslaughter in his death on Oct. 14, and with endangering the welfare of his three older siblings. They were all found to be severely malnourished and were hospitalized.
Prosecutors said last week that in 2022, when Jahmeik was about 2½ years old, he was seen by a doctor and weighed 23 pounds — below the weight of nearly all boys that age, according to government statistics.
It was not clear whether A.C.S. knew that Jahmeik’s weight was abnormally low in 2022. When he died, he weighed 19 pounds — normal for a 1-year-old boy.
The suit, brought by Ms. Ragsdale’s sister Nyisha Ragsdale, who lives in Brooklyn, will argue that A.C.S. “failed in its duty to monitor the safety of Jahmeik Modlin, despite multiple reports of domestic violence, malnutrition and unsafe conditions within the household,” according to court papers.
A representative for the family, the Rev. Kevin McCall, said that Jahmeik’s mother told him that in 2022 she had told A.C.S. that she was being abused by Mr. Modlin and asked the agency for help, to no avail.
The family was the subject of at least four reports to A.C.S. between 2019 and 2022. The only claim A.C.S. substantiated was the earliest one, that Nytavia Ragsdale hit Mr. Modlin in front of their children. Domestic violence in the presence of children is considered a form of child neglect that can lead to the abuser losing custody, but A.C.S. instead referred the family to social services. A.C.S. determined that a 2020 claim that the parents used drugs and were inadequate guardians was unfounded.
In the most recent case, in 2022, a neighbor reported that a terrible odor was coming from the apartment and that she heard Ms. Ragsdale say that Mr. Modlin had hit her.
In that case, the family did not let A.C.S. into their apartment until after they had cleaned it up, toward the end of the investigation, according to a person who saw the family’s social service records. But a caseworker examined the children, saw that they had eczema and had their mother take them to the emergency room. The case was closed, and there is no mention of malnutrition in the A.C.S. caseworker’s notes.
Prosecutors and the police said last week that the apartment was stocked with food, but the cupboards had locks on them and the fridge was turned to the wall. Feces was smeared on a wall in the children’s bedroom. Jahmeik’s parents told the police that the children seldom left the apartment, almost never saw a doctor and were never enrolled in school, according to court papers.
Nyisha Ragsdale, the aunt, said through Mr. McCall that she had FaceTimed with the family a week before Jahmeik died. But the call was brief — “The kids said, ‘Hello, hey Auntie,’ and that was it” — and she saw only the children’s heads and noticed nothing amiss, Mr. McCall said. Jahmeik’s mother had ceased most contact with her siblings, he added.
The suit seeks $40 million in damages “for a death which never should have happened if A.C.S. was doing its job,” said Sanford A. Rubenstein, a lawyer for Nyisha Ragsdale. He said that she will also seek custody of the surviving siblings.
A.C.S. has said that it will conduct “an in-depth review” to “identify opportunities to strengthen our policies,” but has otherwise declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality laws. Jahmeik’s death prompted an outcry across the city and spurred demands to know whether A.C.S. missed danger signs.
At a news conference in Mr. Rubenstein’s Brooklyn office, Nyisha Ragsdale called Jahmeik “a wonderful kid.”
“He played. He laughed. He smiled,” she said.
Jahmeik’s funeral will be held Tuesday evening at Elim International Fellowship church, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
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