For nearly a year, law enforcement officials in New York labored over the investigation into the murder of a 7-year-old girl named Julissia Batties who was found fatally beaten at her mother’s apartment in the Bronx.
Julissia’s father and grandmother said that investigators urged them to be patient; the case, they said, was complicated.
On Wednesday, the waiting ended. Julissia’s mother, Navasia Jones, and Julissia’s 18-year-old half brother, Paul Fine, were arrested on murder charges, the police said. Fine was also charged with sexual abuse.
The arrests close a chapter in the story of a girl from a turbulent household who had a case file with the city’s child welfare agency from the moment she was born. She had been the subject of an abuse report four days before her death, filed by a neighbor at the Mitchel Houses in Mott Haven who saw her with a black eye.
Julissia’s murder on August 10 was one of a string of deaths last year that prompted the city to enact new policies to keep closer watch over families where abuse was suspected and to improve coordination between the police and the child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services.
Immediately following Julissia’s death, her mother and half brother had offered conflicting explanations — Fine said he hit Julissia for taking some snacks, but Jones said the girl had fallen and hit her head on a desk, the police said at the time. Ultimately, the authorities determined that both were responsible, though they did not immediately say on Wednesday what roles Jones and Fine had played in Julissia’s death.
Julissia’s paternal grandmother, Yolanda Davis, who raised Julissia for most of her life, said by phone from the Bronx courthouse where Jones and Fine were to be arraigned that the investigation should not have taken this long. “But I’m glad we’re here now,” she added.
Julissia’s father, Julius Batties, standing outside the 40th Precinct station house, where Jones and Fine were being processed, said, “I feel a lot of different emotions — happy, sad, disgusted. But it’s a great feeling the process is going forward.”
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