Suit accuses agency, Sheriff ’s Office of negligence

Attorneys representing the estate of a 3-year-old boy found dead in the laundry room of his family’s Hollywood home have filed a lawsuit against the Broward Sheriff’s Office and the Department of Children and Families, accusing the agencies of failing to protect the child when they should have known his life was in danger.

Ahziya Drew Osceola was killed two years ago, and his stepmother, Analiz Rodenzo Osceola, 26, is in jail awaiting trial on a manslaughter charge. The boy’s parents, Nelson Osceola and Karen Cypress, are not directly involved in the lawsuit, which names attorney Donald Spadaro as “personal representative” of the slain child’s estate.

The wrongful death and negligence lawsuit seeks “in excess of $15,000” and would most likely benefit the child’s estate and Cypress. Nelson Osceola is facing a related child neglect charge that might prevent him from being able to collect on any award related to the death. His next court date is in June.

Bradley Edwards, the lead attorney for the plaintiff’s side, declined to comment Thursday. The Broward Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Children and Families did not issue a response to a request for a statement as of late Thursday. The agencies typically do not comment on pending lawsuits.

The child’s body was found March 19, 2015 at the Osceola home on the 5400 block of Johnson Street. He had bruises on his face and body, his pancreas was severed into three pieces and his liver was torn, according to the Broward Medical Examiner’s Office. He also had “cocaine and morphine in his system [and] a fractured leg and/or foot that had been broken for weeks without medical care,” according to the lawsuit.

The Department of Children

and Families, along with the Broward Sheriff’s Office, failed to notice the warning signs that could have saved the boy’s life, according to a DCF review released six weeks after he died.

Ahziya Osceola was being monitored by ChildNet, the Seminole Tribe and the Broward Sheriff’s Office after he was placed in his father’s custody in January 2014 because his mother had been charged with child neglect and officials did not feel he was safe with her. That case began when the boy, then 2, was found alone in the lobby of a hotel where his mother was staying, according to the lawsuit. The child neglect charge is still pending.

The agencies monitoring Ahziya throughout 2014 noticed bruises and other injuries, but no one concluded it was necessary to find someplace else for him to live, according to the DCF review.

The lawsuit goes into some detail about three incidents: a mark below the boy’s eye observed in May; a suspicious mark on his buttocks in June; and an emergency room visit in December for “bruising on his face as well as complaints of painful buttocks when he sat down.”

At that point, according to the lawsuit, the Broward Sheriff’s Office and DCF should have been able to note a “pattern of abuse” and intervened.

“It should have been obvious to anyone paying minimal attention that Ahziya was being tortured and physically abused,” the lawsuit states. According to the lawsuit, Nelson Osceola’s custody was dependent on the boy staying on the Seminole reservation with his grandmother. But officials knew the father, stepmother and child were staying at a different location in Hollywood, the lawsuit alleges.