The Oklahoma woman accused in the death of 4-year-old Athena Brownfield last year is expected in court Wednesdya to be arraigned on a first degree murder charge.

Brownfield was reported missing on January 10, 2023, after a mail carrier found her 5-year-old sister wandering alone outside the home of Ivon and Alisia Adams, their caregivers, in Cyril, , as CrimeOnline reported.

When she was arrested last year, Alysia Adams told investigators that Ivon Adams beat Athena to death on Christmas Day 2022 and then took her body and buried it on property he once owned, where the little girl’s remains were found on January 17, 2023. She was charged with child neglect and he with murder when they were arrested, Alysia in Oklahoma and Ivon in Arizona.

But after an autopsy revealed the little girl died not from a beating but from “acute pneumonia complicating malnutrition,” the charges were switched. Ivon Adams now faces child neglect charges and is expected in court in April.

In December, prosecutors said they’d upgraded Alisia Adams’s charges because she put A”thena Brownfield in a closet and depriv[ed] the child of proper nutrition.”

The medical examiner’s report said that Brownfield was far below standards in weight for her size and age at the time of her death. Additionally, her body was found stuffed into a backpack and buried in a shallow grave — and the backpack, with the little girl’s body in it, weighted just 23 pounds.

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[Featured image: Athena Brownfield/handout]