Broward grandmother charged with murder in scalding death of toddler

Akilah Johnson:

A Broward County grand jury indicted a mother and grandmother on first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse charges on Thursday for the scalding death of 3-year-old Jaquez Mason, state prosecutors said.

Annie Williams, the boy's grandmother, originally was accused of the lesser charge of aggravated manslaughter.

The Broward Sheriff's Office rearrested her Thursday. Williams, 51, had been free on $100,000 bail since her New Year's Day arrest. Her daughter, Valerie Kennedy, has been held without bail in the North Broward Jail.

Kennedy, 30, of Coral Springs, had lost custody of the boy and his seven siblings because of abuse. She was not supposed to have contact with them, but her mother allowed her a Christmas Day visit with the toddler.

Williams, who was raising five of the children, violated a court order by allowing visit, investigators said.

Within hours of arriving at Kennedy's Coral Springs apartment, the boy was dunked into a tub of scalding water as punishment for soiling his diaper, investigators said.

Despite second- and third-degree burns over half the boy's body, Jaquez's grandmother picked him up from his mother's apartment and took him home to Deerfield Beach.

For the next week, she swabbed ointment over his wounds but didn't seek a doctor, a Broward Sheriff's Office report said. It wasn't until he stopped breathing on New Year's Day that she called paramedics.

A preliminary autopsy showed the boy died a half-hour later from complications of the scalding, the Medical Examiner's Office said.

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