Investigate 3-year-old foster child’s meth overdose fatality
A3-year-old girl dies in foster care after overdosing on methamphetamine for the second time in 13 days. How could this happen? How did little Mariah Sultana Mustafa end up with meth in her system? How could she be returned to the same foster home after the first overdose?
The painful story, detailed last weekend by Bay Area News Group reporters Matthias Gafni and David DeBolt, reveals a broken foster care system and officials who display no inclination to fix it.
Mariah died in San Joaquin County, where she was sent by Alameda County child protective services workers. To ensure this never happens again, Alameda County supervisors or the county grand jury should launch an independent investigation to determine for the public why so many warning signs were missed.
Instead, county officials have circled the wagon, refusing to release documents about Mariah’s Oct. 16, 2015, death — documents that should be made public under state law designed to cast sunshine on cases of neglect or abuse.
So many questions demand answers: Why was Mariah placed in the care of a foster mother, Maria Moore, who already had allegations of “general neglect” sustained?
Why was Moore allowed to share care-giving duties with boyfriend Ernest Stevens III, who had a history of drug abuse? Why is Moore allowed to continue keeping foster children in her Stockton home, even after Mariah’s death and after admitting she knew of Stevens’ drug history?
What about Triad Family Services, the agency that helped Alameda County authorities place Mariah with Moore? Does it still have a contract with the county — and, if so, why?
How is it that Joanne Willis of Triad visited the foster home three times between Mariah’s two overdoses and was unconcerned? What about Alameda County social workers Diane Davis Maas and Sue May, who allowed Mariah to remain in Moore’s house after the first overdose?
That first overdose occurred at least three days after Mariah was placed in foster care. Yet, nurse Jeremy Massey at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Stockton suggested the meth had been consumed before Mariah arrived at Moore’s house. Why?
Did Stockton police investigate whether that delay was even possible? A toxicology expert tells us it wasn’t, that the severe symptoms Mariah exhibited would surface immediately after drug ingestion.
When Mariah overdosed the second time and was up all night, why didn’t Moore take her to the hospital? Why did she leave the little girl, still in bad shape, with Stevens the next day?
It was Stevens who found Mariah cold and unresponsive. It was Stevens who handed one of the emergency responders a small white rock of meth he said he found on Mariah’s toy box. And it was Stevens who was the key suspect in Mariah’s death when he committed suicide four months later.
The criminal case is apparently closed. But Mariah should have never been left in Stevens’ care, nor Moore’s. Why were so many warning signs ignored? How many other foster children remain similarly endangered?
The public deserves answers.
There’s a lot we don’t know about why a C.K. McClatchy High School student was able to show off his blatantly racist “science” project for two whole days before it was mercifully removed.
But what we do know is that, at yet another Sacramento County school, racism reared its ugly head, and the adults whose job it is to supervise students and defuse such divisiveness utterly failed to do so.
It happened at Mira Loma High School, where teachers and administrators with the San Juan Unified School District downplayed the routine harassment of two black students, Makayla Madkins and De’Ajhane Caldwell, by a classmate in the school’s prestigious International Baccalaureate program.
It also happened at Pleasant Grove High School, where teachers and administrators with Elk Grove Unified School District brushed off complaints from Rachael Francois, a black student who said she had been called the N-word and that small nooses had been found hanging from trees on campus.
And now, it’s happening at McClatchy and the Sacramento City Unified School District.
It took until last Wednesday for someone at the Land Park school to take down the now infamous student project, titled “Race and IQ,” from the Mini Science Fair. Slapped together with pink construction paper, tape and minimal research, the student, who peers say is of Northeast Asian descent, set out to prove that the racial disparity in McClatchy’s elite Humanities and International Studies Program was justified.
To do that, he gave a handful of teenagers an online IQ test, and found that “non-Hispanic whites and Northeast Asians have an IQ advantage of fifteen points over blacks and Southwest Asians, and 10 points over non-white Hispanics.” Therefore, he concluded, black, Hispanic and Southeast Asian teenagers aren’t as smart as those who are white and Northeast Asian.
Not only was the project racist, the methodology was the very definition of junk science and should be beneath the standards of an elite academic program.
Which raises the question: Where were the teachers when the student floated his half-baked idea? Why did no one intervene to turn this into a teachable moment?
And where were the administrators when the inevitable uproar started – first from students, then from parents and then, as word spread on social media, from around the globe?
Our community deserves answers. More to the point, we shouldn’t have to keep asking the same questions — not at McClatchy and not at any other high school in California in the 21st century.
A plan by Sacramento City Unified Superintendent Jorge Aguilar to examine the lack of diversity in the district’s elite academic programs is a good start, but real change will require more than just enrolling more teenagers of color.
“The use of racially offensive language in our schools, by anyone, does not reflect our values as a school district and will not be tolerated,” Aguilar said in a video message released Saturday, hours after The Bee’s Diana Lambert and Anita Chabria published a story about the embarrassing episode at McClatchy. “… Yes, we’ll respect freedom of speech, but we will also uphold our duty to limit speech that is likely to cause disruptions to our students.”
Teachers and administrators have to be more sensitive to allegations of racism and more proactive about addressing it in the classroom, even when that means setting the most stubborn students straight.
IFree Shrimp. If we do not suggest 5 butterfly shrimp before we give you your total, you will get them free!!!
Let me first say, in case it’s unclear, that I LOVE the food at Captain D’s. I realize it may not be the most healthy meal option out there. Yes, I know it can be greasy and almost everything’s fried but that’s what makes it so delicious.
I always get the two piece fish plate which comes with two sides. I ask for DOUBLE fries as my two sides. I love the little “cracklins” they put in there with the fried fish. I guess those are just the little pieces of fried batter. They’re delectable. I should probably just ask for those as a side.
Anyhow, the meal always comes with hushpuppies which I DO NOT enjoy so I give those away, sometimes to my coworker Tona who loves them.
And to top it all off, I’ll bathe everything in half a gallon of malt vinegar.
Malt vinegar is really the only condiment that’s appropriate to have with Captain D’s. I rank malt vinegar right up there with Dale’s Sauce when it comes to the perfect complement to food. You can’t beat those two for flavor. They go well with anything. But I digress. So anyhow, for years I’ve been going to Captain D’s and for years I’ve been waiting on the drive-thru worker to mess up and forget to offer me the five shrimp before she gives me my total.
And it seems to me like it has always been the same lady working there since I can remember. Her name is Angela, I believe. She is very nice and always patient with customers.
And if for some reason my double fries take a long time, she’ll always apologize for my wait and it seems like she has a kind word for everybody who pulls up.
HOWEVER, Angela’s a little too on-point. NOT ONCE has she forgotten to offer me those shrimp before she gives me my total. Just once I’d like her to slip up so I can get them for free.
As it is, she never fails to ask if I want to add them to my meal, and with great annoyance I usually go ahead and add them. But would it kill her to slip up every now and again and let me have five shrimp for free? It’s five shrimp for goodness sakes. Captain D’s can afford to give me five shrimp. I’ve almost single handedly kept the franchise alive for the past 10 years. It’s the least Angela could do. So the last time I was there, I ordered and Angela asked If I wanted anything else. I said no and there was a long pause. I thought “This is it. This is the day she slips up and I get my Jim Powell of Young Harris Severo Avila
shrimp for free.” She was going to give me my total and tell me to drive around and all those years of waiting would have been completely worth it.
But lo and behold her voice came over the speaker asking me if I wanted to add five shrimp for just over a $1. It was like a kick in the gut. I was so close .... and yet so far.
Of course I grudgingly told her to add the shrimp and when I drove around I made sure to finally confront her and tell her that her professionalism and sharp memory were both extremely frustrating to me.
And she APOLOGIZED. She seemed genuinely sad that she had caused me to not get free shrimp for so long. Then I couldn’t even be mad at her because she was sincerely apologizing to me for doing her job well. Not only had she robbed me of my free shrimp, but now she was robbing me of my anger. I just can’t win with Angela. She’s good. But she’s got to have a weakness and I’ll find it. No one can be at the top of their game ALL the time. She’s not a machine.
I’ll continue to go to Captain D’s on a regular basis because I really enjoy the food but also because now it’s personal. Now I’m on a quest to get Angela to forget the shrimp. Mark my words. I won’t rest until I get those five shrimp for free.