between the summer of 2022 and November 2022,
A 44-year-old woman in West Virginia is facing criminal charges for allegedly abusing a 14-year-old diabetic girl nearly to death, beating, neglecting, and even intentionally starving the child when her blood sugar was too high. Betty Underwood, of Rivesville, was taken into custody on Sunday and charged with two felony counts of child abuse resulting in injury, authorities confirmed to Law&Crime.
Underwood was booked into the North Central Regional Jail in Greenwood, where she remained in detention as of Tuesday afternoon on a cash bond of $100,012, online jail records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by Weston CBS affiliate WDTV, deputies with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office in November 2022 responded to a call at Underwood’s home in Rivesville in regard to an unconscious 14-year-old girl. Medical personnel on the scene reportedly learned that the child had become unresponsive “due to high blood sugar,” and she was immediately rushed to J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown for treatment.
Doctors at the hospital said that the victim had numerous suspicious injuries, including bleeding on the brain and bruising on her head, face, hands, arms, legs, and feet, Clarksburg NBC and ABC affiliate WBOY-TV reported. The victim was admitted to the hospital and placed in the facility’s pediatric intensive care unit. The 14-year-old reportedly remained in the pediatric ICU for about a week as the medical staff treated her for the brain bleed.
MCSO detectives investigating the case interviewed people who knew Underwood and the victim and allegedly learned that Underwood had been witnessed “hitting [the victim] with a wooden spoon on the hands and face,” the criminal complaint states, per WBOY. Investigators reportedly said that such abuse took place several times between the summer of 2022 and November 2022.
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Authorities also reportedly wrote that they found evidence showing that Underwood “would not allow the victim to eat when her blood sugar was too high,” and that witnesses had seen Underwood “shoving the victim’s face into a dirty cat litter box for not cleaning the box the way she thought it should be cleaned.”
In one particularly concerning exchange, a witness allegedly told investigators that they heard Underwood “making comments that she did not care if the victim died and advised a neighbor to inject her with a full pen of insulin, knowing it could kill the victim,” the affidavit reportedly states.
The relationship between Underwood and the victim was not immediately clear. The Marion County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a message from Law&Crime seeking additional information on the matter.
If convicted, Underwood faces a maximum sentence of up to five years in a state correctional facility for each count of child abuse.
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