Honolulu police are investigating the death of a 2-year-old girl who allegedly had boiling water poured on her in August while staying on base with her Schofield Barracks father, relatives of the girl and officials said.
Ocean Wright was sent to Hawaii for the summer for visitation with her father, said the girl’s mother, Sassidy Curry, who lives in Las Vegas.
On the evening of Aug. 18, a 911 call came in requesting medical assistance at the on-base home of Army Sgt. Christian Whiting, 25th Infantry Division spokesman Lt. Col. Curt Kellogg said.
Honolulu Emergency Medical Services, which responded, said the 2-year-old had second-degree burns to the right side of her face, forehead, neck, arms and leg.
“Medical first responders made the determination that the child needed further care and needed to be taken to the hospital,” and she was transported to Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children, Kellogg said.
Miracle Watson, a cousin of Curry, alleged on her Facebook page that the child was “burnt with boiling hot water and only God knows what else. She is really a sweetheart. There’s nothing in the world she could of done to be treated this way.”
Curry told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Tuesday that Whiting’s mother called her to say that “Christian found the child in the bathtub and her skin is peeling off her face.” Curry said Whiting, a cook at Schofield, has told her differing stories, including that he was downstairs with his wife, Tihani, heard Ocean screaming and found her in the bathtub.
Another version Curry said she was told was that the little girl was “playing with a wire behind the TV.”
“When I received the devastating phone call I rushed on a plane to Hawaii from Las Vegas, not knowing where or how I was going (to) care for myself and arrived at the hospital to see my child unrecognizable,” Curry said on a GoFundMe page.
At the time of the posting on Sept. 6, Curry said her daughter was in surgery to have skin grafts. But the daughter she called “Oshie” died Sept. 25, she said.
Curry said she spoke with a doctor at Kapiolani after her daughter was admitted, and he “told me that Ocean is being treated for scalding water burn, and I started crying and said, ‘What does that mean?’ even though I knew what that means. I had to hear it. He tells me the child had been burned with water.”
Honolulu police spokesman Michelle Yu said when the case was initiated, it was investigated as a possible first-degree assault, but after the girl died it was reclassified as an unattended death until the autopsy report is finished. Yu said there have been no arrests.
Kellogg said the state’s Child Welfare Services was notified of the girl’s injuries the same night the 911 call came in. Curry’s GoFundMe page is at www.gofundme.com/oceans-medical-fundtravel.
