'Skeleton' Boy, Siblings Rescued By Authorities

SARASOTA, FL — A 4-year-old Sarasota boy checked into All Children’s Hospital at the request of the Department of Children and Families last week was suffering from malnutrition so severe the mere sight of him took a detective’s “breath away.”

That’s what Sarasota Police Detective Megan Buck noted in a probable cause affidavit related to the arrest of the child’s parents, Kimberly Haygood, 27, and Anthony Jones, 30.

The boy, she noted, ”looked like a skeleton.” He “was skin and bones. He has no hair because of lack of nutrients. He has a skin rash and marks from the lack of nutrients.”

The child is also unable to talk, Buck said in her report.

“The sight of the 4-year-old took my breath away,” she added.

Doctors at All Children’s Hospital told Buck the boy weighed only 22 pounds, the average weight of an 11-month old baby. His twin sister was also found to be seriously underweight at 26 pounds.

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Meanwhile, the twins’ older sibling, a 6-year-old boy, told investigators his father “hits him with a brown belt and leaves marks,” the report noted. The older child was also found to be underweight for his age, but told investigators he eats meals at school and at after-school care.

The older child also told investigators his father also hits the twins “with a belt, a striped one and brown one.” Those beatings, the report said, allegedly occur when the twins’ go “boo boo in their pants.”

When questioned about the 4-year-old’s weight, Haygood told hospital staff her youngest son “has an aversion to food” and had been on a “liquid diet since birth,” the report noted.

Haygood has been charged with two counts of aggravated child abuse, two counts of child neglect with great bodily harm and child neglect. She is being held in the Sarasota County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bond. Jones faces the same charges, but his bond was set at $60,000. Both parents have been ordered by a Sarasota County judge to have no contact with their children, an email from the police department stated. Jones was further ordered to stay away from all minors.

Additional charges against the two are pending further investigation, the police department wrote in an email to media.

Booking photos courtesy of the Sarasota Police Department