Anthony Yonko (right) and Lisa Mitchell (left) have been charged in their 7-year-old daughter’s death (Pictures: Midwest City Police Department)
The parents of a 7-year-old girl allegedly brought her malnourished and dead body to a hospital and claimed she had the flu.
Cops responded after Anthony Yonko and Lisa Mitchell drove their child to Saint Anthony’s Midwest Hospital in Oklahoma on Friday morning, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by Law & Crime.
The girl was pronounced dead there not long after her arrival.
She ‘had signs of rigor mortis and possible injuries internal and external’, medical staff told cops, per the affidavit.
Anthony Yonko has been charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count each of torturing, death of a child by injuring, and maiming (Picture: Midwest City Police Department)
The girl was ‘extremely malnourished’ and weighed just 25 pounds and was about 37 inches tall. Her weight was half of that of the average girl her age, which is 50 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Doctors said that ‘numerous amounts of black and dark red secretions came from the child’s mouth when pushing on her stomach area’, states the affidavit.
When why his daughter was emaciated, Yonko allegedly said that she was ‘completely healthy’ and weighed 50 pounds four to five days before and could not explain why she was half that weight at the time of her death. The dad also claimed that he ‘feeds the child all the time’.
The dad also claimed that his daughter and him slept in the same room the night before she died and that he woke up that morning to find that she was ‘not moving and was sick and needed to go to the hospital’.
Lisa Mitchell has also been charged with one count of first-degree murder (Picture: Midwest City Police Department)
He said that they had been giving their daughter ‘crackers and soup because she possibly had the flu’, the affidavit states.
Yonko also admitted that they had not taken her to see a doctor since she was ‘much younger’.
But the dad’s story changed several times in interviews with law enforcement. Eventually, Yonko said that his brother, who was living with them at the Vista Green apartments seven miles east of Oklahoma City, took them to the hospital.
The brother told cops that Yonko was ‘freaking out’ on Friday morning and saying that they needed to get his daughter to the hospital.
Yonko and Mitchell have each been charged with one count of first-degree murder, court records show. The dad has also been charged with a count each of torturing, death of a child by injuring, and maiming.
The girl died days after a Minnesota father was sentenced to five years in prison for starving his 7-year-old daughter to death for almost a year until she succumbed on Christmas Day.
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