STARKE, Fla. -- A Bradford County jury found the state Department of Children & Families 100 percent at fault Wednesday in the death of a 3-year-old girl left in an abusive home.
Ciara Floyd was beaten to death by her mother's boyfriend in 1996, a month after the girl's father took her to Shands Hospital in Gainesville with bruises on her chest and back. A state child abuse investigator said there was not enough evidence to remove the child from her mother's home. The boyfriend, Larry Christopher Noegel, had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Jurors awarded $250,000 to Ciara's father, William Floyd.
"I'm glad my story could finally come out and everybody else could finally see they had more than enough; they could have prevented her death," Floyd said. DCF officials did not immediately say whether they would appeal the verdict. "We are reviewing the jury's decision and are exploring our legal options," DCF spokesman Tim Bottcher said in a statement. DCF's lawyer said in closing arguments that the investigator, Janice Joiner, had no recourse under the law but to leave Ciara with her mother. Deputy Attorney General Denis Dean said in defending DCF that there were no doctor's reports from Shands indicating abuse. "Without that, there were no reasonable grounds to justify the removal of Ciara," Dean said. "Whether she'd like to do something, whether she has a feeling, she has to follow the law. It'd be great if she had a crystal ball." But Floyd's lawyer said the bruises on the child's chest and back, an admitted domestic battery by her mother's boyfriend and a verified abuse report involving another child should have prompted Ciara's removal from the home, attorney Val Bates said. "Would you have to have more information than that?" Bates asked jurors. "Ms. Joiner, she wants to see a knife sticking out of your neck." "I did everything I knew everything I could legally do and it didn't do any good," Floyd said he told Ciara as he held her unconscious body just before she died. Bates asked jurors to award Ciara's father $250,000, more than twice the state cap of $100,000, for negligence claims against state agencies. Bates said no amount of money could ever compensate Floyd for losing his daughter, who would now be 11 years old. Dean called Floyd's death a "tragedy" but urged jurors not to "let the tragedy of her death be compounded by blaming Janice Joiner."
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Jury's Ruling Bittersweet For William Floyd
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