A 15-month-old baby was found alive near his mother’s corpse at a New York homeless shelter.
Little Lyric Laboy was found alive on July 25 under a bed next to her mother’s body in a homeless shelter in New York. Shelbi Westlake had succumbed to an overdose five days earlier, leaving her 15-month-old child trapped alone in their bedroom. When discovered, Lyric was “covered in feces” and malnourished. She was taken to the hospital, reports the “New York Post”.
If this tragic story is making headlines today, it is because the child’s father, Quraan Laboy, 31, intends to file a complaint against the Department of Homeless Services and against the city of New York. He is asking for $5 million in compensation. The Department of Homeless Services denied that the child had been alone for five days, but did not say how long his mother had been dead. No one realized Shelbi Westlake had died until another resident reported a “foul smell” coming from her unit, according to legal documents. The mother had last registered with the shelter on July 19, six days before her body was discovered. An investigation is underway.
“I don’t know how long she will suffer. She suffered from separation anxiety,” Quraan Laboy said of her daughter. His lawyer added that the child has developed a habit of ‘kicking his father when he sleeps to make sure he is still alive’. The couple had separated and the mother and daughter had apparently been living in this shelter for several months. “She always wakes up in the middle of the night, she kicks, she struggles saying, ‘Mom’, I look at her and I start crying sometimes,” the father said. “My daughter is going to have to live with this all her life.”
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