KID ALONE in PAST
City eyed stripper before fire tragedy
You don’t leave a 2-yearold alone in the house. (The mom) deserves what she gets. — SHELLONON ARCHIB ARCHIBALD, PATERNAL GRANDMA
A BROOKLYN stripper chose the club over her 2-year-old daughter — with deadly consequences — but it wasn’t the first time she’d left her kid alone.
Leila Aquino, who was partying with friends when her daughter died alone in a fire, was already under investigation for working the night shift while the girl was home unsupervised, watching TV, sources told the Daily News.
Aquino “chose that life, that fast money,” said the dead child’s paternal grandmother, Shellon Archibald. “You don’t leave a 2-year-old alone,” she said of the pole-dancing-mom. “She deserves what she gets.”
The missing mom worked at City Scapes Gentleman’s Club, the Queens jiggle joint where Knicks benchwarmer Cleanthony Early was partying before he e was shot in late December.
Aquino’s Instagram ac--count is under the name “Lily Bad Ass,” with the tag line, “I sin, but I’m no (devil). I’m good, but I’m no (angel).”
The 20-year-old ap--peared about 9:30 a.m., two o hours after the fire in herr third-floor Bedford-Stuyve--sant apartment was extin--guished Tuesday. Firefight--ers found the body of ador--able Kaleenah Muldrow in the rubble of a bedroom where she apparently ran when the blaze began.
Archibald said Aquino only started stripping in recent months. “My son let her live rentfree,” said the devastated 49-yearold grandmother. “She had a diploma. She could’ve gotten a regular 9-to-5 job.”
The city launched a probe of Aquino just one week before the fatal blaze, sources said.
Last March, the city received a call from a neighbor saying the child had bruises and marks on her body, NBC reported.
Archibald’s father, Joe Muldrow, who lives on the first floor of the building, saw Aquino leaving around 11:45 p.m. Monday and assumed she had the little girl with her, police sources said. Hehad no idea the girl was alone.
“I wouldn’t have allowed it if I had known,” the great-grandfather-told WPIX-11.
Aquino was initially slated to work Monday night, but her plans changed and she instead went out with friends, according to police.
Aquino tried to blame the Tuesday tragedy on a bogus “baby-sitter” before finally confessing that she had left her daughter sitting alone in front of the television, according to sources. The woman’s usual baby-sitter told cops that she stopped working for Aquino on Feb. 6 because the mom owed her $200, the sources said. The sitter would watch Kaleenah when Aquino worked her strip club shift until the split over money.
The cause of the 6:45 a.m. blaze was under investigation, although it started in the Aquino apartment.
The mom was charged with endangering the welfare of her child and reckless endangerment, both misdemeanors. Bail was set at $10,000, which she did not immedi- ately raise.
“My client is grieving for this child,” her attorney said. “She has a funeral to attend for her child.”
Aquino, who sobbed throughout her arraignment, had four prior arrests, police said. She was convicted of robbery and assault in 2015,according to court records.