The parents of a 5-year-old New Mexico girl have been charged with child abuse resulting in death after the girl was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning beneath their sleeping parents in their tiny home in Silver City.
According to KRQE, the state Children, Youth, and Families Department had received multiple calls prior to the death of Xaqueline but did little more than note difficulties contacting the parents.
The Grant County Sheriff’s Department responded to an address on a call of a non-responsible child just after 11 a.m. on March 10, although it’s not clear who made the call since deputies could only get a minimal response from the parents, Music Adame, 34, and Matthew Bynum, 38. A 7-year-old boy was also on the scene.
The deputies found the 5-year-old beneath the sleeping parents in a room they said was filled with clutter. They ordered the parents up, but reported their response was slow. The deputies repeatedly asked the parents if they’d been doing drugs as they carried the little girl out of the house and began life-saving efforts, including administering Narcan.
Adame admitted she’d smoked marijuana and methamphetamine more than 24 hours earlier, telling the deputies she “never felt like I did last night.”
A medical examiner ultimately determined that the girl died from carbon monoxide poisoning from Adame and Bynum burning coals in the home. Court documents said the home did not have running water or a stable source of heat.
The documents also said the 7-year-old boy was checked into a hospital and determined to be dehydrated and have pneumonia. The children, the documents said, were “left to habitate in an extremely filthy tiny home which was unsafe for human occupancy.”
The state child care agency knew about conditions at the home and the apparent lack of care of the children. Police found the children dirty and not in car seats during a traffic stop last August. Two months later the sheriff’s department filed a report with the state agency because the home where they lived did not have a working toilet or running water and the children were not going to school.
In January, school officials reported to CYFD they were concerned about physical and emotion abuse of the boy. During that investigation, the parents reportedly admitted to drug use and domestic abuse, and concerns about the home were again noted. The sheriff’s department issued a temporary custody order for the children, saying they believed they were in danger, but it’s not clear if that order was executed.
This week, CYFD told KQRE it “is cooperating with law enforcement” in the “ongoing investigation.” The boy has now been taken into state custody.
The arrest affidavit noted that Bynum and Adame “have had an extensive period of time in which there has been great concerns regarding the inadequacy of care to their children, which eventually led to the death of one child and the hospitalization of the other.”
“There has been, for the most part, a lack of cooperation with CYFD and the resources that CYED could have been provided to them to mitigate their familial circumstances and conditions at the times of attempted interventions,” the document said. “Now, Matthew Bynum and Music Adame are in cooperation with CYFD and their efforts only after losing the custody of their remaining child and the death of another.”
Adame was charged this week, more than two months after Xaqueline’s death, with intentional abuse of a child resulting in death and two other child abuse charges. Bynum has been charged with intentional abuse resulting in death and one other child abuse charge.
Both are being held without bond, jail records show.
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[Featured image: Matthew Bynum and Music Adame/Grant County Sheriff’s Department]
