A Florida woman has been charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child after her 5-year-old stepson drowned in a man-made pit.
Cheyenne Star Fite, 25, was supposed to be watching the child and his two siblings. She told police she turned her back for a few minutes to fold laundry and heard one of the other children yell for help, Fox 35 reported.
Fite told authorities that she did not initially react to the call for help and continued folding laundry. Some time later she went to look for the boy and realized he was in the man-made hole, the station reported. She pulled the boy out of the hole and called her mother, who also lives on a trailer on the property.
However, according to an arrest affidavit, one of the child's siblings told police that the 5-year-old had been sent outside naked as punishment for hurting a chicken, WKMG 6 reported.
The child also told police that Fite was asleep at the time of the drowning, the station reported. The pit had apparently been dug in an effort to drain water on the property, but the TV station noted that, according to court documents, the pit had filled with a mixture of water, fecal matter, and urine from a pig pen.
Police also noted that the pit was about a football field away from the trailer and not close by, according to court documents reviewed by WKMG. Police doubted that Fite could have had a good view of the children.
Deputies reportedly found several items in the trailer that were considered hazardous for children to play around, including knives, rusted metal, animal feces, and scrap metal, WKMG reported.
Fite was being held in Osceola County Jail.
