The body of an 11-year-old girl was found in a freezer in Bradenton, Fla. and police believe it to be the body of a young girl who has been missing for at least a month.
The body of an 11-year-old girl from Bradenton, Fla., Janiya Thomas, missing for weeks, has been discovered in the family’s freezer. On Friday, Bradenton police arrested the girl’s mother, Keishanna Thomas. However the charge in the arrest was for aggravated child abuse on her 12-year-old son. Thomas claimed the boy’s injuries were due to the boy running into a dresser and shattering the mirror.
The boy had been sent to his room by Thomas’ live in boyfriend after Thomas had returned home with her son from a trip to the local WalMart. Thomas works at the WalMart and their security people had released her son to her saying he was caught shoplifting. The boy said he climbed out of his window and went to the recreation center located at the apartment complex they live in, where he told someone how his mother had slapped and punched him on the whole ride home from their trip to WalMart.
Bradenton police and Florida child services went to Thomas’ home on Friday to take her five children into state custody. However, there were only four children at Thomas’s apartment. When the police inquired about the fifth, 11-year-old Janiya, police and child services were told by Thomas that the young girl was staying with relatives in New Jersey.
When the alleged child abuse incident happened with her 12-year-old son, police asked about Janiya for three weeks and kept getting the same answer, that she was visiting relatives. On Sunday, police found the body of an 11-year-old girl in a freezer that is located at the home of Thomas’ sister and mother. Authorities believe the body in the freezer is Thomas’s daughter Janiya. Thomas is currently being held on $75,000 bail for the child abuse charge. Thomas had previously been to court and accused of taking one of her children into a locked bathroom and hitting her.
According to one report, Thomas and a man had brought the freezer to her mother’s house a few days before.
The body of the young girl has been moved to the coroner’s office where she will be examined to determine her cause of death as well as a to try and get a positive identification.
