Update, 1:56 p.m.: In a new post, we look into whether Chevelier is a Maryland hip-hop artist with a criminal record.
Fort Lauderdale Police went to a home on Saturday to investigate reports that children at the house were being tortured. There, they encountered 22-year-old Irma Mustamu and a young child with a hand wrapped in cloth.
"As the cloth was removed, it was discovered that the child's hand was severely burned, to the point that the child's hand was grotesquely deformed," Fort Lauderdale Police spokesman Travis Mandell wrote in a
release. "Due to the burns, the child was missing one finger and two partial fingers."
Mustamu said the injury happened in Maryland in August 2010, when the child was burned by hot soup on her birthday. When detectives got the child's medical records from Maryland, however, they found a clean bill of health dated more than two months after the supposed soup incident. Mustamu said she and her husband, 29-year-old Kenneth Chevelier, "fled" Maryland for reasons that have been redacted from documents. Mustamu said that instead of getting the child medical attention, she and her husband looked up burn treatments on the internet.
When a doctor told detectives on Tuesday that the girl's injuries were consistent with abuse, police arrested Mustamu and Chevelier on charges of child neglect; they're currently in jail, and the child is with the Department of Children and Families.
