Malayshia Alford was 10. She was last seen on Thursday, Oct. 22, coming home from school in West Philadelphia to the house on North Simpson Street where she lived with her foster mother. Days later she was reported missing. In the first week of November her body was found in the trunk of a car in Lindenwold, New Jersey.
Her foster mother, Carprice Williams, 36, a fifth-grade teacher in the Philadelphia School District, is charged with murder, abuse of a corpse, endangering the welfare of children and related offenses. District Attorney Larry Krasner called it a “brutal murder” and indicated more arrests and charges are possible. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide caused by blunt force trauma, with a fractured rib, bruises on the head, torso and buttocks, and whiplike marks across the legs.
What the city did before she died is now the question. Mayor Cherelle Parker has ordered a review of Philadelphia’s foster care system, the Philadelphia Inquirer and 6abc reported. The reports reviewed here do not say who will conduct it or when it will report.
What is established, and what is alleged
The charges, the cause of death and the date she was last seen come from prosecutors and the medical examiner. The account of how she lived comes from a criminal complaint and police report, and none of it has been tested in court. Unnamed witnesses told police Williams withheld food from the child, struck her with a phone cord, forced her to climb stairs in a weighted vest and made her ask permission to use the bathroom, the Inquirer reported. Police also allege Williams used the girl’s phone to send texts after her death.
Williams has contradicted the witness accounts. She told investigators she never hit Malayshia, though she acknowledged the child had recently fallen on steps, according to the Inquirer. The Defender Association of Philadelphia, which represents her, did not respond to the paper’s request for comment. She is presumed innocent.
The record that was already there
What is not in dispute is the file on Williams from five years earlier. In 2020 two young sisters were placed in her home. In January 2021 she brought the 4-year-old to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with a traumatic brain injury, severe malnutrition and strike marks, and a doctor certified it a “near fatality.” Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services found Williams had abused the child, and a review panel recommended she “never be used as a foster parent for other children in the future.”
Williams appealed, and the abuse finding was later expunged, the Inquirer reported. Malayshia was placed in her home last year, with case management from Catholic Community Services, one of the community umbrella agencies the city pays to run foster cases. Nadeem Bezar, the lawyer for Malayshia’s estate, said the 2021 incident should have barred any future placement. “They took her from an abusive situation, and they put her into a deadly one. That is unacceptable,” he said, as Fox 29 reported.
City Councilmember Nina Ahmad told the Inquirer: “We need to look at this whole CUA system and how it’s operating.”
Why Black Philadelphia is watching
Reports on the case have not stated Malayshia’s race. The system she was in is another matter. Black children have long been over-represented in Philadelphia’s foster care, a disparity the city’s Department of Human Services has itself said it is working to address. When that system fails, the children it fails are disproportionately ours.
Marchers went to DHS headquarters and the school district’s offices on Saturday to demand answers. A foster parent’s right to appeal is real. So is a child’s right not to be placed in a home the state’s own panel had flagged. A system where that recommendation can fall away on appeal, with nothing left on file to stop the next placement, has failed. The mayor’s review has to be independent, public and fast, and it should say who knew what.
A memorial, “May May Day,” for Malayshia was scheduled for Monday, Nov. 9.
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