By FREIDA FRISARO and ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON Associated Press
MIAMI (AP) — Police in Miami arrested a 41-year-old woman in the deaths of her two children, aged 3 and 5, after officers responded to repeated hang-up 911 calls from her apartment where they found their tied-up bodies.
“Come get them, I don’t want them anymore,” 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.
This photo provided by the Miami-Dade County Jail shows Odette Lysse Joassaint. Police in Miami arrested the 41-year-old woman in the deaths of her two children, aged 3 and 5, after officers responded to repeated hang-up 911 calls from her apartment where they found their tied-up bodies. (Miami-Dade County Jail via AP)
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, a police report said.
They tried to resuscitate the children until a Miami Fire Rescue crew arrived and pronounced them dead. The woman has been charged with two counts of murder.
Police have not said how many calls were made to 911 or whether she spoke to a dispatcher.
Miami police spokesperson Michael Vega 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.
The father, Frantzy Belval, told The Miami Herald the children lived with Joassaint full time, and would normally visit him once a week on Saturdays. He said the mother was unstable and had not worked for a year and had been begging to move back in with him, but he refused.
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.
