As detectives continued their hunt for the killer of 13-year-old Cynteria Phillips, judges and social service administrators agonized over their own past efforts to protect the habitual runaway who had been placed in state care eight years ago.
"We're looking very seriously at our internal processes," said Charles Auslander, region administrator in Miami for the state Department of Children & Families. "We're asking whether we were doing what we could to protect her."
Cynteria's nude body was found Tuesday morning in an alley near Northwest 60th Street and Third Avenue, behind Miami Edison Senior High. She died of a beating to the head.
About two weeks earlier, Cynteria had run away from the Miami Bridge shelter for troubled children. Detective Emiliano Tamayo, the lead homicide investigator, said Thursday that Cynteria spent those two weeks with relatives and friends, moving between Liberty City and Carol City. He said none of the relatives is a suspect in the girl's murder.
"We're getting a lot of phone calls coming into homicide, and that's positive," Tamayo said. "We need to continue getting community cooperation."
From her first placement with the Children's Home Society in September 1992 until she ran away for the last time from the Miami Bridge children's shelter July 30, Cynteria had been in eight other foster or group homes and 14 schools from one end of the county to the other.
"What happened in the system with this little girl is happening to hundreds of children just like her," said Judge Jeri Beth Cohen. "The only difference is she's dead."
Cohen, the only judge on the Governor's Commission on Mental Health and Substance Abuse, lays the blame with the Legislature for failing to adequately fund programs for children in state care.
"We have a whole subculture of children, 26,000 in the state, who are in need of services," Cohen said. "Some are dependent, others are abused and neglected, many have committed crimes and are in the delinquency system. But however you classify them, you are dealing with the same issues."
Judge Steven D. Robinson, who issued a pickup order for Cynteria on Aug. 2, said he never saw the child in his courtroom despite several hearings on her status.
"I've been advocating, in fact all the dependency judges have been asking, that in all active cases, children over 10 be involved in the review hearings," Robinson said. "But it's a big logistical problem for the department. I have responsibility for over 800 children in foster care, in addition to all the new cases I'm hearing. And when the child is a runaway, there's nothing that can be done until they are found."
Auslander said an interagency team will study the circumstances that led to Cynteria's death to determine "why this came to pass."
"We have a child who came into our system physically abused, potentially suffering other forms of abuse, with a lot of behavioral issues," Auslander said. "I don't have all the information, but what I see is a great deal of therapeutic intervention and efforts to stabilize her."
Cynteria's behavioral problems worsened in the months before her death. Minor disciplinary infractions such as defiance of school authority, for which she received reprimands, turned quickly into more aggressive acting out, which drew suspensions.
On Dec. 14, two days after her 13th birthday, she was assigned to JRE Opportunity School in South Miami, a facility for students with serious discipline problems.
The action was taken after she had been twice suspended for fighting, first at Mays Middle School on Nov. 19 and again on Nov. 30 after being transferred to Glades Middle School, both in the far south end of the county.
But she moved to another foster home in the north end of the county and never entered the disciplinary program. Following another shift in foster homes, this time back to the south, she disappeared from the authorities for nearly four months, until she was found in May and placed in shelter care again at the Miami Bridge.
Cynteria ran away twice, then returned late Monday trying to retrieve her clothes and other belongings, but was turned down. She left and was found dead the next day.
Police asked that anyone with information call Miami police at 305-579-6530. There's a reward of $100,000.
Ellis Berger can be reached at eberger@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5004.
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