LAKELAND | Clarissa Johnson says she never found the perfect home for the ashes of her first child, Michael, who was born three months premature and died from complications of a bowel obstruction.
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Zachary Johnson
Now after four years, the 20-year-old Lakeland woman must deal with the ashes of another son, Zachary, who police say was violently shaken to death while in the temporary care of his maternal aunt and her husband, Mysti and Matthew Wyrosdick.
Prosecutors on Thursday upgraded charges against Matthew Wyrosdick to aggravated manslaughter of a child, a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison. He is being held in the Polk County jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.
Johnson was at a loss for words Thursday to describe her emotions over the death of her youngest son, Zachary, a precocious toddler taken from her eight months ago after she and her husband, Gene, were jailed on July 26 and were charged with stealing a car and money from an elderly relative.
Zachary's death on March 13 from injuries suffered a day earlier has been the focus of an investigation by law enforcement and the Department of Children & Families, whose errors in the case are outlined in a 14-page summary included with some 500 pages of DCF documents released Tuesday to the public.
Among those errors - DCF took too long to reunite Zachary and his brother, Austin, 2, with the Johnsons.
DCF also faults staff members at Educare Early Learning Center in South Lakeland who photographed numerous marks and bruises on Zachary while the boy was in temporary custody but never alerted authorities of their concerns.
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