Yesterday, a funeral was held for three-year-old Kyle Smith, who died under the care and apparent abuse of family friends. Family members, friends and neighbors shed tears and voiced regrets over the child's death. Kyle's mother, Eugenia Holmes, carried a photograph of her son. Last year, while battling drug addiction, Holmes had agreed to let her friend Nymeem Cheatham take Kyle in. After his battered body was examined by the medical examiner's office two weeks......

After a 3-year-old boy died, battered and sexually abused by his caretakers, fingers have pointed at his abusers, his parents, his neighbors and the Administration of Children's Services. Now lawmakers hope to new law can stop similar tragedies. Kyle Smith had been in the care of his godmother Nymeem Cheatham and her boyfriend Lemar Martin when his mother needed help, as she battled her drug addiction. Though a court found Cheatham to be an able......

Family members mourning the death of a 3-year-old child at the hands of a family friend who was caring for him are speaking out, including the child's mother. Kyle Smith died last Friday, with extensive injuries including broken bones, cigarettes burns all over his body, and tearing from sexual abuse. His godmother Nymeem Cheatham and her boyfriend Lemar Martin admitted to beating the child and were arrested and are being held without bail. Kyle's mother......

The godmother of a 3-year-old boy and her boyfriend reportedly admitted to prosecutors that they beat the child, who died on Friday. However, Nymeem Cheatham and Lemar Martin, who are being held without bail, did not confess to killing Kyle Smith, who was found with cigarette burns, bruises all over his body, a torn tongue, a broken pelvis, and signs of sexual abuse. Back in 2007, when Cheatham petitioned for custody of Kyle (his mother......

The terrible death of a 3-year-old child while under the case of his godmother and her boyfriend has Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbors reeling. Kyle Smith was declared dead on Friday, after an attempt by EMS to save him. The ME's office found he had a broken leg, a broken pelvis, bruises, signs of being sodomized with a wooden stick, and cigarette burns all over his body. Godmother Nymeem Cheatham, who had been caring for Kyle for 18......

Never mind the kids who are being murdered by violent parents or drugged to death by foster mothers, the Administration for Children's Services is busy checking up on the home environments of kids who skip gym class too many times, even though that's not technically a violation worthy of an ACS home visit. Like her son blowing off gym class, Karen Dussack skipped a meeting at Bronx Science to talk about her progeny having......

Michelle Gochenaur, the biological mother of the child who died after an overdose of the painkiller fentanyl administered by her foster mother, is suing the City for $50 million. Six-year-old Taylor Webster (pictured) had complained to her foster mother Joanne Alvarez that her neck hurt. When a children's Motrin allegedly didn't ease the young girl's discomfort, Alvarez applied a transdermal patch containing fentanyl--a powerful opioid painkiller not intended for use on children. Alvarez later found......

Charges against Kiana Paez have been upgraded to second degree murder in the death of her 11-week-old son, Pablo Paez. Three weeks after he was brought Elmhurst Hospital, doctors declared that the infant had suffered permanent brain death, and the child was removed from life support. The recovering-addict mother brought her son to Elmhurst Hospital earlier this month, saying that her son had just stopped breathing. After an examination of Pablo by doctors and questioning......

A 7-week-old baby who has been beaten since he was just 2 weeks old is now brain dead at Elmhurst Hospital, after his mother admitted to beating her son and then dropping him on his head. And the Daily News reports that the Administration for Children's Services had visited mother Kiana Perez just two days before. Perez, an ex-junkie whose first child was taken away by ACS but was allowed to keep baby Pablo because......

The father who wanted to give up his 6-month-old baby out of desperation has told the police he wants to surrender. Carlos Rodas, 27, was overwhelmed when his 14-year-old girlfriend and the mother of the baby left him to care for their daughter, so he, his sister, and her boyfriend, a livery cab driver, worked out a plan for the driver to leave the baby at a Queens fire house. The story of the......

As details continue to emerge about the plot to fake a baby's abandonment in Queens, the fate of the baby has remained questionable. Now the Administration for Children's Services say the 14-year-old mother, who may not have known about the plot, may get the 6-month-old baby back. An ACS spokeswoman said, "The child has the right to be raised by the parent." The Post reports the mother, Yelemer Cosme Perez, is in ACS custody while......

After the city was moved by the story of a baby abandoned in the backseat of a livery cab and how the driver dropped off the baby at a fire house, prompting the police and media to look for the baby's relatives, it turns out the livery cab driver was involved in the abandonment scheme. Driver Klever Sailema was arrested today, as were another man and woman. Oh, no. According to the police, "Sailema was......

A 6-7 month old baby girl, strapped in a car seat, was left in the backseat of a livery cab this morning. Tel-A-Car driver Klever Sailema picked up a man and the baby around 9:45AM this morning at 106th Street and Northern Boulevard in Queens. When the cab got to 83rd and Northern, the man said he needed to make a call and left the car. Only he crossed "the street to a pay phone......

In a sign of these struggling economic times, more than a few New York businesses are making it clear that money is money, whatever the currency. Reuters spoke to a few business owners who explained why they are open to moneys from foreign lands. East Village Wines' Robert Chu said, "We had decided that money is money and we'll take it and just do the exchange whenever we can with our bank...[S]ome days, you'd be......

Hey, tourists, NYC may want you to spend lots of money when you visit the Big Apple, but just don't get really sick or else the Administration for Children's Services will take your kids in! Because that's what happened to one British family last month! Yvonne Bray and daughters Gemma and Katie, who live in Devon, England, were visiting New York for four days, staying at the LaGuardia Courtyard Marriott. The mother fell ill with......

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced this morning that they had arrested a suspect in the murder of orthodontist Daniel Malakov. Kelly said that the suspect, Mikhail Mallayev, was a relative (by marriage) of Malakov's ex-wife. Malakov was shot in the chest after just after dropping his 4-year-old daughter Michelle to his ex-wife at a Queens playground on Sunday morning. He and his wife, Dr. Mazeltuv Borukhova, had been embroiled in a bitter divorce and custody......

Last year, there was a very sad report about a 14-year-old boy who committed suicide by jumping into the frigid waters of the East River, and his mother suggested it was because of school bullying. Now the Daily News reports that the Administration for Children's Services had been investigating a charge that the boy's mother had choked him and beat his brother with a belt. Last March, Sidney Hatchett and his 6-year-old sister were walking......

More than a year and a half after the death of Nixzmary Brown, the Administration for Children's Services has hired 20 retired NYPD detectives to work as trained investigators consulting with ACS caseworkers. The ACS plans on eventually fielding 120 such investigators. The need for a bolder approach to protecting children being monitored by the ACS follows the beating death of Brown in January 2006 and a number of other deaths of children under ACS......

The death of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown shocked the city in January of last year. The child was beaten to death in her family's Brooklyn apartment and a history of abuse, including being tied up to a chair and showing up to school with bruises (when she would appear in school on rare occasions), had been noted by the Administration for Children's Services who seemingly did nothing to intervene. Her mother Nixzaliz Santiago and stepfather Cesar......

The short, sad life of Hailey Gonzalez ended yesterday when hospital staff at Richmond University Medical Center on Staten Island removed the 21-month-old from life support. Gonzalez had been in the hospital since last Thursday, when the police discovered that her mother and her mother's boyfriend had thrown her against a playpen and beaten her near the point of death. The couple had waited hours before calling 911, as Hailey foamed from the mouth and......

There was a sickening coincidence yesterday: A report was released that faulted the city's Administration for Children's Services for contributing to the deaths of 10 children in families it was supposedly monitoring, just as a 20-month toddler was brutally beaten by her mother - who was under investigation by the ACS - and her mother's boyfriend. Twenty-four-year-old Marlene Medina and 30-year-old Edwin Garcia allegedly repeatedly "slammed" Hailey Gonzalez into a pack-and-play crib, according to the......

Florida police believe that Judith Leekin adopted 11 foster children, many of them special needs children, while she lived in Queens, collecting millions as she neglected them. After discovering one 18-year-old at a supermarket, police found other children in Leekin's Port St. Lucie home: They were malnourished, had scars on their hands from being handcuffed, left without access to a bathroom and were never schooled. The city's Administration for Children's Services is cooperating with Florida......

Aleshia Smith was sentenced to more than two and a half years in prison for the 2006 death of her 4-year-old son Quachaun Brown. Authorities believe that Smith's 18-year-old boyfriend Jose Calderon beat the child after he knocked over the TV set on Friday, January 27; last year, the NY Times wrote the Calderon "grabbed [Brown] by the ankles, swung him and hurled him into the wall" and recent reports noted Calderon used his fists,......

The American Cancer Society reported yesterday that city minorities are more likely to die from certain types of cancers than other New Yorkers. In addition to the fact that certain malignancies occur more frequently in some ethnicities, the report, issued after a three day conference in New Orleans, shares that minorities are also less likely to get preventative treatment. And the treatment they do receive once diagnosed tends to be less aggressive. This is due......

An interesting thing to know about growing up under the Administration for Children's Services: If you are diagnosed with gender-identity disorder, your sex change operation will be courtesy of the city. The Post reports that for the second time, a judge has ruled that the city should pay for the operation since Mariah Lopez was diagnosed with gender identity disorder. The city appealed, but Judge Sheldon Rand ruled in Lopez's favor yet again, saying that......

We're used chopsticks to as ad-hoc kite frames, but we've never ever crafted a brace out of them for a 20 month old toddler's ankle fracture. Yet that's what health guru David Jubb did instead of taking his son to the doctor. Jubb, who the Post excitedly proclaims has clients like Liv Tyler and Donna Karan AND drinks his own urine, had to give up custody of his son when he didn't follow the Administration......

Yesterday morning, Bronx couple Rosa Lopez and Francisco Pena realized their 2 year old son Anthony was missing when they were getting their children ready for school. After searching for him, they found him dead, in a plastic container. It turns out his 6 year old brother Alexis had put Anthony in a Rubbermaid storage bin - the boys and their 4 year old sister were playing a game of hide and seek after their......

It was one year ago yesterday that 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown, previously starved and beaten, was murdered in Bed-Stuy - her stepfather and mother are currently charged with her death. On this grim anniversary, city officials and child advocates implored the government to increase resources in keeping with an increase in child abuse reports over the past year. Specifically, officials are requesting an increase in the number of Family Court judges and maintaining a healthy budget......

Subway special on the Gothamist Newsmap: a person struck by an A train in Brooklyn, a stabbing on the J train in Queens, and a "train job" (?) at Newkirk Avenue. Rosie's Trump beef now extends to Barbara Walters, who appears to have been stabbing her in the back in private conversations with Donald Trump: "Are you looking me in the face and denying you didn't tell him you didn't say this? You're a......

They say New York is home to a million stories, and so far this year, we've published 7021 of them here on Gothamist. So in case you missed any of those, let's take a little stroll back in time, and review the most significant stories the past 12 months, shall we? Here's part one of a semi-chronological look at 2006; part two will go up tomorrow: Nixzmary Brown and the Problem with the Administration for......