The coroner has released the name of a 3-year-old Taft girl, investigators believe, was killed by her mother's live-in boyfriend. Trinity Hanna died at San Joaquin Community Hospital Tuesday night. On Wednesday, deputies arrested 26-year-old Eric Foster.
He's being held on eight charges including three counts of felony corporal injury to a child, three counts of felony child abuse, one count of torture, and one count of aggravated mayhem.
Pictures of Trinity Hanna are all over her mother, Angela Vickrey's Facebook page. In one post she calls her daughter "the best thing that has ever happened to me."
The Kern County Sheriff's Department says Vickrey brought her 3-year-old daughter to the emergency room from her home in Taft. Hospital staff tried, but was unable to resuscitate Trinity and she was pronounced dead. Elizabeth Mulikin was in the ER when the little girl was rushed in.
"And, then the nurses and the doctors just started crying and they loved each other, they stood in a bundle and loved on each other," said Mulikin.
Deputies arrested Vickrey's boyfriend, Eric Edward Foster, Wednesday. Deputies say Foster has been charged with domestic violence before. Investigators say he lived with Vickrey and Trinity at a home on Oak Street in Taft.
"We live like five steps away from the front door," said neighbor Carrie Wallace. "We would have heard something and we heard absolutely no screaming, no fighting, nothing."
Neighbors say the three had only lived there about a month and never noticed anything wrong with Trinity.
"They played with her outside and everything. Friendly, the little girl was bouncy of course real active little girl," recalled Wallace.
17 News tried contacting Angela Vickrey, but her family says they are all grieving privately. An autopsy is scheduled for Thursday.
