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"Mother Who May Have Fed Her Son Improperly Is Charged in His Death" By
Rachel L. Swarns
1 Oct 97, page B3

In the days after her 2-month-old son died, Tabitha Walrond wept openly
in the dim hallways of her brick tenement in th Bronx, telling neighbors
she so missed her gurgling baby that she could not eat or sleep.

She called him "an angel boy who brought love." And after he died at
Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center on Aug. 27, she scribbled those words on
the back of a tiny photograph of her black-haired son, Tyler.

But a month after Tyler's death, Ms. Walrond, 19, stands accused of
starving the son she mourned.  She was arrested Monday and was arraigned
yesterday on a charge of criminally negligent homicide.  Prosecutors say
Ms. Walrond, who had been breast-feeding her son, failed to feed him
properly and to heed warnings that he was becoming sickly.

A law enforcement official described the case as one of negligence
rather than a deliberate attempt to starve the child.  Ms. Walrond, a
recent high school graduate, had no history of abuse or neglect, the
police said. Relatives said she regularly fed Tyler, her first and only
child.

But Ms. Walrond's relatives said she was stymied in her attempts to seek
medical attention for her son because she lacked health insuance for
him. On July 19, two weeks after Tyler's birth, Ms.Walrond took him to a
check-up at a private clinic run by the Health Insurance Plan of Greater
New York on the Grand Concourse and was turned away, relatives said.
When Ms. Walrond, who had Medicaid coverage for herself, returned to the
clinic two weeks later for her own appointment, a doctor noticed that
the baby seemed thin, said Valerie Walrond, Ms. Walrond's mother.
However, the doctor weighed the baby and said he was fine. He had
actually gained two ounces, Valerie Walrond said.

Telephone calls to the H.I.P. climin last night we answered by a
recorded message that provided a referral number. An employee who
answered that number said he could not answer questions.

While the family scrambled to get Tyler's birth certificate and social
security card, the paperwork necessary to apply for Medicaid for him,
the baby steadily lost weight. When he was born, Tyler weighed 7 pounds,
15 ounces.  When he died, he weighed 5 pounds, the police said.

Prosecutors declined to comment in detail on the case yesterday, saying
only that the young mother had been warned that the child looked sickly
and needed care. Cameron Walrond, an uncle of Ms. Walrond's said his
niece did notice that her son was losing weight and often seemed hungry.
But he said Tyler was born with heart problems, and the family
attributed his weight loss to that.

Still lacking health insurance for her son, Ms. Walrond finally took him
to the emergency room at Bronx Lebanon Hospital on Aug. 27 after
noticing that he would not open his eyes. He was pronounced dead on
arrival. A hospital worker, noticing that Tyler seemed malnourished,
called the state's child abuse tip line to report the death as
suspicious.

It took a month for the Medical Examiner's office to determine the cause
of death. When that office ruled on Monday that Tyler had died from
"dehydration and starvation," Ms. Walrond was arrested in her apartment
in the Tremont section.

By chance, Ms. Walrond's arraignment yesterday fell on the day that
another woman appeared in court for starving her child.  Carla Lockwood
pleaded guilty to depraved murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life
in the death of her four-year-old daughter, Nadine.

The two cases, while similar, are different in one key respect.
Prosecutor's say Ms. Lockwood deliberately starved Nadine, depriving her
of food, confining her to a crib and hiding her from friends, relatives
and investigators from city welfare agencies. When Nadine's body was
discovered in a Washington Heights apartment on Aug. 31, 1996, she
weighed only 15 1/2 pounds.

Ms. Walrond, on the other hand, is not accused of trying to deliberately
kill her son.  She faces up to four years in prison if convicted of
criminally negligent homicide.

At her arraignment in Bronx Supreme Court, the District Attorney's
Office asked that Ms. Walrond be released on $50,000 bail. But Justice
Fabiloa Soto of State Supreme Court ordered Ms. Walrond remanded to
Rikers Island. Her relatives, who lined the pews in the Bronx
courthouse, wept.

"This baby was her life," said Mr. Walrond, her uncle. "And it's tearing
her apart to hear someone accuse her of taking Tyler's life."

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