Six-year-old Jelayah Eason was smart, funny and always playful. It was a life that never really started.
At 4 a.m. on May 26, police officers found her at home bruised and unconscious. Her mother, Lynija Eason, had called 911. She was pronounced dead less than an hour later at Lincoln Hospital.
The doctor on duty noted that she had “fresh abrasions under her left arm, scar-like markings to her wrists and back and multiple bruises, and old lacerations,” and that her mother had “no explanation to the injuries.”
“I thought my children were fine,” Ronald Branch, the father, said.
Branch had been fighting for custody of his little girl and her older brother and didn’t even know he wasn’t on their birth certificates until Jelayah died.
Three months later, the medical examiner still hasn’t determined a cause of death; Jelayah still hasn’t been laid to rest; and no one has been charged with her death.
“I want to know ‘what’s taking the court so long.’ I want to know ‘what’s taking the DA’ [District Attorney]. I wanna know like, ‘why is it taking so long for an autopsy to come back?’” asked Branch who had also been waiting for the results of his paternity test to come back.
It’s evidence he needs to both bury his daughter and get custody of his 8-year-old son. And just this week he said he received the DNA evidence proving he is his son's father.
“I guess she abused them so much that they, they would be like, ‘Daddy we can’t tell you what happened cause if we tell you we’re going to get in trouble when we go back home,’” Branch said.
After Jelayah’s death, the Bronx District Attorney charged Eason with endangering the welfare of her surviving children. She pleaded not guilty.
Last fall a complaint made to the city’s Administration for Children’s Services alleged Eason‘s son had been a victim of “Excessive Corporal Punishment, Inadequate food, clothing and shelter, and that he had Swelling, Dislocation and Sprains.”
NY1 has learned ACS determined those claims were “unfounded.”
”It hurts, it hurts bad, like so bad,” Branch said when asked about his reaction to these claims.
In March of this year, records show ACS did substantiate a new claim that the children were left home alone.
On May 12, records show caseworkers made a virtual home visit where the mother and children were seen. May 17 were the last attempted home and schools visits. Nine days later 6-year-old Jelayah was dead.
“Everybody knew what was going on and nobody did nothing,” Branch said.
When police entered the apartment, they found soiled clothing and garbage and rotting food. They said it was “infested with insects and smelled of feces and urine.”
“Remove my kids from their home, period. If y’all had seen the neglect that my kids were going through, why didn’t y’all remove them and let me fight from there?,” Branch said in reaction to the state of the apartment and prior complaints.
Family friend Sonya Glover says every day the 8-year-old boy remains in foster care is a day of lost healing. He witnessed his little sister’s death.
“To know what has happened to your sister, to know that your sister’s no longer, to know that you do not have access to your dad when you need him, when you have nightmares? So I am angry, I am disappointed. I’m taken aback by the whole process,” Glover said.
And while Branch fights for custody of his son, he is still waiting to lay his daughter to rest.
“Every day I wake up, every day I go through this, I think of my daughter every day, every day,” he said.
An ACS spokesperson says the agency does not comment on case specific information, but that as it “has recovered from the pandemic, in-person visits have been required with very limited exceptions. Virtual visits are now only for supplementing visits.”
Lynija Eason’s attorneys declined to comment on her case. The Medical Examiner’s Office and the Bronx District Attorney both say the investigation continues.
As for Branch, he’ll be in court on Aug. 31 when he hopes the paternity results will convince the judge to allow him to bury Jelayah. His custody court date is in September.