Sister says Fort Worth girl, 3, was beaten to death because she would not eat cereal
In Tonny Manns’ telling, he heard a thud and went back to the bathroom. There, he discovered that Eriykah Taylor, the 3-year-old he was caring for, had fallen from a counter, he told police.
Manns said he had been preparing to have her stand in a corner because she would only nibble on a sausage biscuit he had prepared.
When he stood Eriykah up from the bathroom floor, she said her arm hurt, Manns said. He had her rotate it, and he squeezed both of her arms. He asked if she was OK.
“I’m OK,” the little girl said.
Eriykah became listless, Manns told a police detective, and said she felt hot.
The girl would be taken by ambulance on that Saturday afternoon in March from the house where she lived on Chaparral Creek Drive in Fort Worth to Cook Children’s Hospital. She was not breathing and did not have a pulse. She was pronounced dead.
Eriykah had suffered a right arm fracture and had bruises on the left side of her face and her right lower abdomen. A physician believed her death appeared to be the result of an assault.
Fort Worth police detectives on Wednesday arrested Manns, 24, on suspicion of capital murder of a person under 10 years old in Eriykah’s death.
Dr. Richard Fries, a Tarrant County deputy medical examiner who conducted an autopsy, told police Eriykah had suffered several blunt force injuries. The most severe injury was a liver laceration. Fries, whose conclusions are described in an affidavit supporting Manns’ arrest written by Detective Bradley Cantu, said Eriykah’s death was consistent with blunt force trauma to the abdomen.
Fries said that it was possible, but highly unlikely, to fall from a three-foot counter and receive the type of fracture Eriykah suffered. It would require a significant amount of force to cause such an injury, Fries said, and Manns’ account was of an unlikely scenario.
Eriykah, who died on March 21, is one of five homicide victims in Fort Worth this year who were 4 years old or younger. Officials with Cook Children’s said in April that health care workers had noticed an alarming spike in child abuse cases around the time of Eriykah’s death, including seven children who had been severely physically abused between March 17-21. Hospital officials have said they believe the spike might be linked to stress related to the coronavirus outbreak.
Police interviewed Eriykah’s sister, whose age is not reported in the affidavit. On the day Eriykah died, her sister said, Eriykah was not eating her cereal. As a result, Manns made Eriykah go to time out in his bedroom.
She said Manns then gave Eriykah a “whooping” by hitting her on the buttocks with a belt. She said she heard Eriykah crying, and also heard Manns yelling at Eriykah. “Don’t pee on yourself, don’t scratch, don’t pick, and make sure you eat that food,” he said.
She said she covered her ears because of how loud Manns was yelling. She later saw that Eriykah was not feeling well, saw her vomit milk and noticed that Eriykah was having trouble talking. Manns tried to wake up Eriykah, but could not, she said.
The sister, who said in the interview that Manns had previously “whooped” her with a belt, said that he also would step on her when she was bad.
“She explained that he would step on her belly for not taking a nap or step on her back for kicking his legs,” Cantu wrote in the affidavit.
The sister said that she had also seen Manns step on Eriykah when she was being bad or when she urinated on herself.
While executing a search warrant at the Chaparral Creek Drive residence, a police officer found what appeared to be vomit on a black blanket in the middle of the bed in Manns’ bedroom and on the floor, according to the affidavit. Traces of blood were found on one of the pallets where Eriykah and another person slept and in the bathroom sink and bathtub.
Detectives appear to have interviewed Manns at least twice.
In the most recent interview, on Aug. 18, Cantu asked Manns if there was something that another child in the house may have seen him do to Eriykah that the witness could have misinterpreted as a whooping. Manns denied beating the girl.
“I’m 6’4” two hundred and something pounds. I wear a [expletive] size 13 shoe. If I did any of that to the [expletive] two of them it would be something else. Like you could [expletive] tell. ... No dude, no.”
In another section of the affidavit, Cantu describes Eriykah’s body in the emergency room.
She was lying on her back and was wrapped in a white blanket. She had a neck brace on and a tube in her mouth from being intubated.
Her face, shin, hip, and the skin behind her ear were bruised.
This story was originally published October 15, 2020 at 1:53 PM.
