Mom charged with killing son had 3 stories on how he was hurt | Miami Herald

Six months before Rashid Bryant stopped breathing, with four cracks in his skull, the toddler was brought to the hospital with a different injury: a badly hurt leg.

The hospital visit wasn’t Jabora Deris’ idea. A child welfare caseworker had insisted she bring her son in to get treated.

Rashid was about 17 months old. The Opa-locka boy had spent most of his life in state care, and had been returned to his parents only three months earlier — albeit under the oversight of the state.

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There were ample red flags. He was the toddler son of parents who had been the subject of two dozen abuse or neglect reports. His leg was clearly hurting. His mother could give no clear, consistent answer for what had happened.

Although Deris acquiesced to the caseworker’s insistence that she go to Jackson North Medical Center, no x-ray occurred. No one insisted on one, including the caseworker who accompanied her. Rashid was too young to speak for himself.

A trove of records from the Department of Children and Families that detail Rashid’s short life and painful death shows that nobody in authority asked the probing questions that might have saved him.

And Deris kept changing her story — offering three different versions of what happened to the leg.

In a May 22, 2020, text to one of the boy’s aunts, Deris said she “beat” Rashid’s “a-s.” Six days later, she texted another aunt a picture of Rashid’s right leg, badly swollen. The aunt would later tell police that she suggested Deris take Rashid “to the hospital to seek medical treatment” — advice that apparently went unheeded.

As for what happened to Rashid, Deris told the aunt he hurt his leg when a sibling removed him from a playpen and dropped him. It was story number one.

Around two weeks later, the family’s guardian-ad-litem, a volunteer advocate for children, noted the leg injury and reported it to the child welfare caseworker, a later DCF special review said. When the worker insisted that Deris bring Rashid to Jackson, Deris complied. The caseworker met Deris at the hospital.

Only now, Deris said “the minor child was playing on the top bunk bed and rolled out [of] the bed,” according to notes taken by the caseworker, dated June 12, 2020. That was story number two.

The reasons for the lack of an x-ray are murky.

A report written months later said Deris told the boy’s doctor — wrongly — that Rashid had injured his leg only two days earlier. The report said the doctor offered Deris the choice of x-raying her son’s leg or “supportive care,” such as over-the-counter pain medication. She chose the latter, the report said.

The caseworker described the hospital visit, which began at 3:34 p.m., in detail in her notes. Rashid, wearing gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt, sat on his mother’s lap. He was placed on the floor and a picture was taken. “The minor child was able to stand on his own, but once he noticed what appeared to be pain, he lifted the leg and would not walk on it,” the caseworker wrote.

“The doctor reported no foul play,” the caseworker added. “The doctor informed the mother to continue with Motrin and ice the leg. The minor child did not need an [x-ray] as the doctor reports that his injuries did not call for [one].”

A later police report described the encounter differently. Miami-Dade Police Detective Christopher Perez wrote that records from Jackson North show Deris “refused x-rays to be performed on the victim,” adding Deris “did not seek further medical care” for her son.

In a court pleading later, DCF adopted Perez’s language. “The parents refused an x-ray.”

But subsequently, when the agency released its special review of the boy’s death, the agency once again described the hospital visit from the caseworker’s perspective: “Given the mother’s explanation, and the injury not being assessed as severe, the medical provider opted not to complete x-rays and only recommended the continuation of over-the-counter pain medications.”

If the boy’s caseworker had concerns about Rashid’s leg, her notes do not reflect them.

In contrast, Rashid’s relatives later told police the boy was never really the same after he broke his leg.

One told detectives that in the months after Rashid’s injury, he “had not walked in her presence.” When the relative visited the home, Rashid “was always confined to his bedroom and laying on the bed.”

Rashid was found dead in that bed on Nov. 6, 2020. The autopsy would cite “acute and chronic blunt force injuries,” complicated by “parental neglect” and the “withholding [of] appropriate medical care.”

Deris, 32, and the boy’s 36-year-old father, Christopher Bryant, were arrested, initially on child neglect charges, later elevated to manslaughter and aggravated child abuse.

And only then was the true damage to his leg documented. He had an untreated fracture to his right femur. A DCF email said “the bone did not heal properly, as the fracture was never treated.”

As to how that occurred, the autopsy report said Deris had told a doctor that the leg “got caught in the framework of a crib.” It was story number three.

Whichever story, if any, is true, it was one more agonizing injury in a life that featured several fractures and spanned less than two years.

This story was originally published March 20, 2022 7:00 AM.