Florida mother arrested for murder after police find 2 children dead in Miami apartment
(Miami-Dade Corrections)
MIAMI - Police in South Florida arrested a mother accused of murdering her two young children in their apartment after officers responded to repeated 911 hang-up calls coming from the home and found the bodies of both children tied up on a bed.
"Come get them, I don't want them anymore," 41-year-old Odette Lysse Joassaint told officers who responded to the scene on Tuesday night, according to the arrest report. Police said she appeared to be irrational.
The officers entered the apartment and found a 3-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl. The children were lying in a prone position on the bed with their arms, legs and neck tied, the police report said.
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According to WSVN, the officers untied the children and tried to resuscitate them, but they were already dead.
"Fire rescue was called to the scene and declared both children were deceased," police spokesperson Michael Vega told news outlets.
Police have not said how many calls were made to 911 or whether she spoke to a dispatcher.
Online arrest records show that Joassaint is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and is being held without bond.
The victims' father, Frantzy Belval, told The Miami Herald that his children lived with Joassaint full time, and said they would normally visit him once a week on Saturdays. He said the mother was "unstable" and had not worked for a year. Belval told the newspaper that she had been begging to move back in with him, but he said he refused.
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Police said the father was not living there at the time but said there had been at least four calls made to the address in the past year over domestic violence, trespassing and disturbance. No arrests had been made and none of the incidents involved the children, Vega said.
Law enforcement is also working with the Florida Department of Children and Families, but it is not yet clear whether it had been involved with the family in the past. The state agency did not immediately respond to requests for information.
The childrens' cause of death will be determined by an autopsy.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.