Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Special Needs Child Drowned While Foster Mom Was on The Phone: Prosecutor

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A woman is accused of letting her foster daughter drown because she was on the phone. I'll lay out what Haley Volpatti is accused of doing and what detectives said she told them about the crime. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy.

Starting point is 00:00:25 This case, I'll tell you right off the bat, is an absolute tragedy. Foster parents, of course, play a pivotal role in the lives of their foster children, providing them a safe and nurturing home when their biological parents aren't able to do so for whatever reason. But a 25-year-old foster mom, Halen Volpati, made a fatal mistake, according to investigators in Brazil, Indiana, leaving her 21-month-old foster daughter, Nova Bryant, unsupervised in the bathtub with her two four-year-old sons. And now Volpati is facing a level one felony, neglect of dependent, resulting in death. According to the probable cause affidavit, when police arrived at the home in May, Haylin put the child on the floor in front of Officer

Starting point is 00:01:09 Young and told him that Nova was in the bathtub with her two biological four-year-old boys when she stepped out of the bathroom to get a drink. When she returned to the bathroom, she found Nova floating in the bathwater on her back with only a small portion of her nose above the water. She also added, according to the affidavit, Nova always puts her face down into her bathwater and takes a huge gulp of water, and that must have happened in this case. A police officer tried to revive the little girl before EMTs arrived to take over. Nova was taken to two different hospitals for care. Doctors treated her, and she still had a pulse. Two days after the incident,

Starting point is 00:01:50 detectives say Halen Volpatti went to the sheriff's office with her mother and asked to talk to a detective. She told investigators she was not completely honest with them. The prosecutor says Volpatti first said she talked with her friend for five minutes while she was out of the bathroom. Then it was 15 to 20 minutes before she heard one of her sons yell for her because Nova was in trouble. Finally, investigators said that Volpatti came clean and admitted she was on the phone from 8.30 to 10 p.m.

Starting point is 00:02:20 And after 30 minutes, detectives said one of her sons yelled for her. And that's when she found Nova unresponsive in the bathtub. Nova had special needs and could only hold herself up for a very short amount of time, according to investigators. Police said Volpatti's husband had told investigators that one of Halen's friends was supposed to watch the children. But they say that turned out to not be true. They said it was a lie. The affidavit also lists details about Nova's preexisting conditions. It says she was born at 32 weeks via C-section as doctors had concerns for the intestines growing outside of

Starting point is 00:02:58 Nova's body. It even lists her past medical history, which includes several alarming issues, including chronic feeding disorder, gastronomy tube development, moderate malnutrition, short stature, and spinal asymmetry. An autopsy determined that Nova drowned. She died on June 16th after being on life support since the time she had arrived at the hospital. The little girl's biological parents blame the Department of Indiana Child Services and the child welfare system. Indiana DCS released a statement after Nova's death. It reads, the death of a child is a tragedy. DCS investigated the incident and is taking action to revoke the individual's foster license. We cannot provide additional details due to confidentiality laws. Foster parents complete an extensive background check and vetting process prior to having a child placed with them, along with ongoing training slash education and oversight to maintain licensure.

Starting point is 00:03:56 Now the agency, as you heard, is taking action to revoke Volpatti's foster license. You kind of think that might have happened already. Nova's biological mother, Selena Conkright, believes her daughter would still be alive today if Children's Services hadn't removed her from her care. In October of 2023, Nova had been placed into her third foster home with the Volpattis. DCS had removed Nova from Conkright's care two months after she was born. Conkright told a local TV station that she had ADHD and that DCS told her she wasn't learning quickly enough how to care for Nova with all of her needs. Volpatti has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has been released from the Clay County Jail

Starting point is 00:04:37 after posting bail. Ashley Hadler represents victims of abuse in Indiana. Ashley, thanks so much for coming on. Your thoughts on this case right off the bat. We have a foster mother accused of some really terrible neglect that allowed a child, a toddler, to die, to drown in a bathtub. Absolutely horrifying. I just cannot believe those circumstances that led to this. And it seems like there were a few red flags along the way that were potentially missed. And so whenever we see that happen in a case like this, we always hope that there's a very thorough investigation back to see how this was allowed to occur. The thing that really gets me about this case

Starting point is 00:05:26 is the fact that we have a mother who's accused of leaving young children, even four-year-old boys, her biological children, in a bathtub alone. And every parent is always told, you never do that. I mean, you're not even supposed to walk out of the room for a short time at all when the kids are in the bathtub. But this was a child, you know, even supposed to walk out of the room for a short time at all when the kids are in the bathtub. But this was a child, you know, these are four-year-old boys who were in the tub with Nova. But Nova was a child 21 months old.

Starting point is 00:05:56 I mean, she's not even two years old. She can only hold herself up for a short time by herself. She has all of these special needs. I mean, she was born with so many challenges and she's a foster parent. I mean, she is supposed to be caring for this child because her biological parents, apparently, according to the state, can't do it. And this was her third foster parent. So just the fact that she left the kids for any amount of time at all

Starting point is 00:06:27 unattended in the tub just is really startling. Absolutely. Totally unacceptable. It is parenting 101. You never leave a child unattended in the bathtub and the length of time here, according to the probable cause affidavit was significant. Anywhere from 30 minutes up to an hour and a half. I'm sure more facts will come to light as the investigation continues, but this is something that's incredibly important that the Department of Child Services or DCS follow through with these regulations they have in place for foster parent training so that these are issues that are brought to a foster parent's attention. If they don't know this already, they should absolutely know this. They should be reminded of this to prevent another

Starting point is 00:07:25 tragedy like this. That's the thing that really gets me about this case as well, is the fact that she is a foster parent. She's got her own children. So you would assume that she knows better. And I'm still unclear on that. Yes, they're saying in the probable cause affidavit that after 30 minutes or so, her sons who are four years old and are being treated essentially as babysitters in a bathtub with a toddler with special needs, according to what the investigators are saying, they think it's 30 minutes based on what she's saying. The boy hollers for help and says, mom, come in here. But it could have been up to 90 minutes because she's saying she was on the phone from 8.30 to 10 p.m. And that's just an extraordinary amount of time that she's leaving those children possibly in the tub unsupervised. I mean,

Starting point is 00:08:21 we hear so much stuff about people being distracted. It doesn't matter if it's a cell phone or a landline back in the day. It's really unbelievable to me just how somebody could do that. Truly, truly. I mean, there's no reason for a child to be in a bathtub for 90 minutes, for an hour. That just is incredibly irresponsible, let alone the fact that she left them unattended, the time of night. I mean, we're talking about toddlers and a baby up 9 p.m. and later, just a lot of red flags. And one thing that you see if you search the public record is that one of the former foster parents of Nova had petitioned for temporary and permanent guardianship of her. Because prior to this happening, the former foster parent believed that this foster parent was not qualified to care for her special needs. It's so sad, so terribly sad. And, you know, her parents, you know, her biological parents

Starting point is 00:09:33 obviously wanted her back. I don't know if they were really in a position to do that because custody had been, you know, taken away from them at least for a time. They want to sue the Department of Children's Services, the biological parents do. And the grandmother has set up a GoFundMe to raise money to pay a lawyer to do that. I mean, do they have a case here? Do they have a case to go after the Indiana Department of Children's Services? I think absolutely that is something that they should look into and well within their right to look into. You know, based on the circumstances that we know here, there were several things that could have occurred that should not have. And I think that that's something that the parents are smart to look into,

Starting point is 00:10:28 whether either the individual foster parents or the department or someone else could be held civilly liable for this. Because if you have a set of parents who has been fighting to get their child back and jumping through all of these hoops that were created for them to make sure that this child would be safe, and yet the placement of the child in the meantime did not keep the child safe, that just is incredibly unfair and led to the tragic outcome here. In the statement that DCS released, you know, they said they're in the process of revoking Haylin Volpatti's license to be a foster parent. I mean, I would have hoped that would have already have happened by now. I mean, this is just so

Starting point is 00:11:18 stunning to me based on the affidavit because she went to the police and said, you know, I wasn't honest with you. And the truth slowly, according to what was written, trickled out. It's just stunning to me. Yikes, that this even happened. And what you mentioned before, the kids should have already been in bed at 830 at that age. I mean, it's just, it's crazy. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the language of that statement that in the process of revoking the license is a little curious. I mean, the license must be revoked when the foster parent is charged with a crime like this. It's not optional. So I think that that is interesting. And certainly, you know, the family, the biological parents, if they are looking into this, I hope that they're able to learn through that investigation what DCS knew, whether the licensing requirements had been fulfilled, whether the training, specifically when you have a foster child who has special needs and requires special medical treatment and care, that is something that the department is required to make sure that the foster parents

Starting point is 00:12:32 are fulfilling. So it will be interesting to see if all of those requirements were carried out by the department. It will. It's just an awful case. Ashley Hadler, thank you so department. It will. It's just an awful case. Ashley Hadler, thank you so much. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:12:49 As I mentioned earlier, Halen Volpati is free on bail. She'll be back in court for a pretrial conference in March, and then she is scheduled to go on trial in April of 2025. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me.

Starting point is 00:13:04 I'll see you back here next time.

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Special Needs Child Drowned While Foster Mom Was on The Phone: Prosecutor

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.