A ten-year-old woman was allegedly tortured to dying by her father and his girlfriend simply months after she jumped out of a window to flee the abuse — solely to be returned by cops.
Rebekah Baptiste, 10, was discovered on the aspect of an Arizona freeway overwhelmed and ravenous in July following years of vicious bodily abuse and neglect.
Her father, 32-year-old Richard Baptiste, and Anicia Woods, 29, who acted because the woman’s stepmother, had been later arrested and charged along with her homicide.
However 9 months earlier in Oct. 2024, Rebekah, then 9, made a daring escape from her father’s second-floor Phoenix condo and requested for assist from a homeless individual and a gasoline station worker, telling them that her stepmom abused her, in accordance to AZ Household.
She was taken to Phoenix Youngsters’s Hospital, the place Phoenix police and the Arizona Division of Little one Security [DCS] acquired concerned.
She instructed officers that she ran away as a result of she acquired in hassle after Woods thought she was pretending to sleep, based on a police report obtained by ABC 15.
Woods had made her run laps as punishment and “hit her with a brush on the again of her hand,” the woman mentioned, revealing “faint bruising and marks on the again of each of her arms,” based on the report.
Rebekah mentioned Woods additionally hit her with a belt on her ft and confirmed the officers purple marks on each of them.
“It has occurred quite a bit,” she instructed the cops, the report states.
Police interviewed Woods, who denied hitting Rebekah and claimed the woman was harming herself with a brush the night time earlier than.
The DCS investigator instructed police they’d a number of experiences of Rebekah self-harming and accusing Woods of abuse — however because of the conflicting tales and lack of witnesses, authorities decided the October 2024 incident didn’t rise to the extent of legal prosecution, and the case closed a month later.
A DCS report from this October confirmed that it was one among no less than 12 experiences through the years elevating issues in regards to the woman’s security.
In early July 2025, the household moved from Phoenix to a yurt in a distant a part of Apache County, based on ABC 15.
Rebekah was discovered unresponsive, horrifically overwhelmed, sexually abused and malnourished on the aspect of a freeway in Holbrook on July 27.
“She had bruises from head to toe. There have been accidents to her vaginal and anus space. She had broken, lacking toenails and burn marks on her again that seemed to be in step with cigarette burns,” Kole Soderquist, a deputy with the Apache County Sheriff’s Workplace, testified in September.
She died within the hospital from non-accidental trauma three days later, DCS mentioned. One physician mentioned she was “tortured,” based on AZ Household.
Police searched the household’s residence and found a horror scene.
“There have been plenty of paper towels with blood throughout them in a trash can the place we discovered clumps of hair,” Soderquist mentioned.
Police mentioned Baptiste and Woods admitted to bodily disciplining the woman when she acquired in hassle.
The pair had been arrested and every charged with first-degree homicide, aggravated assault, baby abuse, and kidnapping.
Damon Hawkins, Rebekah’s uncle, instructed AZ Household he partially blames a damaged system for his niece’s brutal homicide. Hawkins says he and his spouse alerted DCS after they began to note purple flags.
He claimed that on a number of events, he tried to see Rebekah and her two youthful brothers, however was at all times turned away.
“I made it clear to the investigator and DCS that the system failed her,” he instructed the outlet. “We’ve logs and logs of the instances the place, over the previous years, they’ve been contacted, of the concern that we had.”
The couple is due again in courtroom in January and is scheduled for trial in June.
