DFW woman burned child in scalding water after the girl soiled herself, warrant says
A 3-year-old girl sat in a bathtub with bubbles and hot water in it early on the morning of Dec. 16 at her father’s Carrollton apartment and she appeared lethargic and “out of it,” according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
A cellphone video obtained by police showed the girl struggle to answer questions from A’Ebonee Odom, her father’s girlfriend.
But Odom continued talking to the child, saying she should not have pooped and peed on herself, according to the warrant.
At some point, the girl started frothing at the mouth and her eyes rolled back as it appeared she was having a seizure, according to the warrant obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Thursday.
Odom offered no help to the child, the warrant says.
This week, Odom was arrested after a Carrollton police investigation accused the 29-year-old woman of causing the child to suffer second-degree burns when Odom placed her in hot water.
Odom has denied giving the girl a bath on that December night, but a deleted video on her cellphone which investigators were able to obtain showed the girl in the tub and Odom’s voice can be heard, according to the warrant.
Odom was in the Dallas County Jail on Friday in lieu of $100,000 bail.
She faces a charge of injury to a child, a first-degree felony, Carrollton police said.
The girl is recovering from her injuries and has since turned 4, Carrollton police said. The child’s name is in the warrant, but the Star-Telegram is not identifying the child.
Odom’s boyfriend is the child’s father. She was the girl’s only caretaker on the night she was burned, police said.
The girl was burned at an apartment complex in the 2700 block of East Trinity Mills Road in Carrollton, police said. Odom was arrested there on Tuesday.
The warrant written by Carrollton Detective Morgan Gowin said Carrollton police were alerted to the case on Dec. 16 by an official with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
The father of the child and the child’s mother had taken the girl to a hospital where she was found to have blisters on her legs from burns as well as bruises on her face, according to the warrant. A bruise on her cheek was consistent with being hit, and a bruise on her ear was consistent with it being pinched or pulled, doctors told police.
The girl’s father told authorities he had left his daughter with Odom overnight while he went to work, and the child was not injured at the time he left.
Carrollton detectives believe the girl was injured after the father left her in Odom’s care.
On the morning the girl was injured, about seven hours after the video was taken, Odom made several web searches on “blisters from hot water,” according to the warrant.
A few minutes after she made those searches on her cellphone, Odom called the girl’s father to alert him about a problem, the warrant says.
Later that morning, Odom sent him a text message suggesting the girl was experiencing a “reaction.” The text said, “The only other thing I can think of is when I put the black glitter leggings on her, I put them inside out so they looked solid black which means the glitter was directly on her skin?”, according to the warrant.
Despite her web history showing searches about burns, Odom never sent any text messages to the father suggesting she believed or worried that the burns came from hot water, the warrant stated.
The girl suffered burns that will likely result in scaring/permanent disfigurement, according to the warrant.
