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Answers still elusive in 12-year-old girl's death

Her family wants to know why she died and why it's taken so long to get her remains.

By MELANIE AVE, Times Staff Writer
Published January 11, 2008

Daniel Vetere, left, and his father, Harold Herrera, have been fighting to get the body of Vetere's daughter, Aleena Vetere, 12, in foreground photo.
	[James Borchuck | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Special to the Times] Aleena Vetere, shown here in 1999, was 12 years old at the time of her death on Dec. 7 at Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital. She had cerebral palsy.

ST. PETERSBURG - More than a month after she died, 12-year-old Aleena Vetere is finally coming home.

The auburn-haired girl, who had cerebral palsy, died Dec. 7 at Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital of a respiratory illness while under the care of the state's foster system.

This week a decision was finally reached between the girl's parents and the private Pinellas County foster agency responsible for her, the Sarasota Family YMCA, to cremate her and send her ashes to her father in St. Petersburg.

Even so, her family has many questions about how she died on the heels of a routine tonsillectomy and why it has taken weeks for her remains to be returned.

"Too much time has gone by," said her grandfather, Harold Herrera, 54, of St. Petersburg, who has called numerous YMCA and state officials to try to get the girl's body. "She's been laying in cold metal bed somewhere. It's so unfair.

"We want to get her remains so we can put her to rest."

Aleena had been in foster care since 2005, after her mother didn't abide by conditions a judge had set for keeping her children, her family said.

Relatives say they have been given little information about the circumstances surrounding Aleena's death or how to retrieve her body from the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office.

Her family said all it was told was that she died of a respiratory illness. It wants more details.

Reached this week, a manager at the Medical Examiner's Office, Sharmaine Luke, said results from Aleena's autopsy are pending. Also, she said, either parent could have arranged to pick up the body at any time by contacting a funeral home.

"There's nothing we can do to stop either parent from doing that," said Luke, who had no record of Aleena's parents contacting the office.

Officials at the Sarasota YMCA, which is also known as the Safe Children Coalition, said the delay with Aleena's body centered on a disagreement between her parents about whether to cremate her body before or after bringing it to St. Petersburg.

Her parents, who are not married, said that is untrue.

Tina Warth, 35, of St. Petersburg said she wanted to see her daughter's body before it was cremated but did not have the $5,000 it would have cost to bring her home and bury her.

"My child is gone, and I have no goodbye," Warth said from the Pinellas County Jail, where she has been since her November arrest on burglary and auto theft charges. "This child didn't need to die.

"She wasn't that sick."

Her father, Daniel Vetere, a 34-year-old electrician, flew to Florida from his home in Eureka, Calif., after he learned of Aleena's death. He's canceled two flights and does not plan to return home until he has her ashes.

"I just want it over with," he said. "It should have been over with weeks ago."

Sarasota YMCA spokeswoman April Putzulu said Aleena's caseworker, who is employed by a subcontractor, Directions for Mental Health, made diligent efforts to work with the parents.

"We had estranged parents," she said. "An incarcerated parent. A parent who lived out of state. A child who was not even in this area.

"All those factors played into an unusual amount of time."

Andy Ritter, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Children and Families in Tampa, said the agency has no plans to conduct an inquiry into the case.

Aleena, who could not walk or talk, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age 4, her family said.

Warth said foster care workers initially began overseeing her care in 2001 after an intoxicated Warth retrieved the girl from her school bus over the protests of the driver.

She lived with her father for a while, but then was returned to Warth.

Warth said Aleena and two younger siblings, who are not Vetere's children, were placed in foster care in October 2005 after she and a drug-abusing boyfriend moved to Ohio despite a court order forbidding contact between the couple.

Aleena stayed with Pinellas foster mother Sandy Dooty for more than a year, but was hospitalized when her health deteriorated.

"She was just a loving little child," Dooty said. "The last couple of months, she'd been in and out of the hospital. I could see her go downhill."

Warth said her daughter's tonsils were removed in November at Tampa General Hospital. Sometime after that, she was taken to a nursing facility in Miami instead of being placed at Lakeshore Villa in Tampa, where she stayed after leaving Dooty.

Warth doesn't understand why no other local facility could be found.

Vetere said he wants to have a memorial for Aleena when her mother is released from jail, but feels "a lot better" knowing he will have his only child's ashes soon.

He signed a form okaying her cremation Thursday.

"I don't know what the problem was," he said. "It just seemed to be a signature on a piece of paper."

Times researcher Shirl Kennedy contributed to this report. Melanie Ave can be reached at mave@sptimes.com or 727 893-8813.

[Last modified January 11, 2008, 00:38:39]