The grandmother of the 7-year-old girl found dead in her Bronx apartment tirelessly fought for years to keep custody of the child — whose tragic death was ruled a homicide on Thursday, according to sources.
But little Julissia Batties was eventually returned to her mom — and her lifeless, broken body, with evidence of trauma all over, was discovered Tuesday morning in NYCHA’s Mitchel Houses.
“I begged them not to give Julissia back to her mother because when she got mad at my son, she’d take it out on my granddaughter,” Yolanda Davis, the girl’s paternal grandmother, told The Post Thursday.
“If she was with me, we’d never be here without her. She’d still be alive.”
Davis said the city Medical Examiner’s Office called her Thursday with the homicide ruling — and added that Julissia was found with severe abdominal injuries. Law enforcement sources confirmed the ruling.
Julissia was thrust into the center of a heated custody battle between her mother Navasia Jones, Davis and the Administration for Children’s Services not long after she was born in April 2014, court records show.
Jones initially lost custody of Julissia shortly after birth — though a family court judge reversed the decision soon after. The Administration for Children’s Services appealed the ruling, arguing Julissia was in “imminent danger of becoming impaired” due to failure by her parents to “exercise a minimum degree of care,” according to the records.
State appellate court judges in 2015 ruled in favor of ACS, finding that though the mom had completed parenting and anger management programs, she “was still prone to unpredictable emotional outbursts” and “was easily provoked and agitated.”
The mom also had four older children removed from her custody a year before Julissia was born, the documents state.
The court said that until the mom was able to “successfully address and acknowledge the circumstances” that led to her other children being taken away, “we cannot agree” that returning Julissia “would not present an imminent risk to [her] life or health.”
Davis said she fostered Julissia for most of the girl’s short life until March 2020 when the child went to visit her mom for the weekend — and was never returned.
The grandmother — whose Brooklyn home is filled with framed merit certificates from Julissia’s preschool days — said she repeatedly pleaded with ACS and a foster-care nonprofit, SCO Family Services, to get the girl back.
But ACS and SCO decided to leave Julissia with her mom permanently, Davis said. Sources told The Post on Wednesday that her mom was granted custody in June, though the circumstances around that decision aren’t clear.
ACS would only say that it was investigating the case with the NYPD. SCO didn’t return a request for comment.
Davis, whose son Julius Batties is Julissia’s father, said the girl’s death could’ve been avoided.
“They should have listened to me,” the distraught woman said, referring to the authorities that sent the girl back to her mom. “She was better off with me.”
Documents from a mental health clinic, Interborough Development and Consultation Center, where the girl was assessed said that she “presents discomfort” when her mom is mentioned. The letter, dated January 2020 and provided to The Post by Davis, followed one from December 2019 that described Julissia becoming “angry and sad” whenever her mom was brought up.
Police had been called to the home at least six times between May 2018 and March 2020 for suspected abuse of the girl, sources said.
The 35-year-old mother, who suffers from bipolar disorder, has eight previous arrests, including two for menacing, sources said. The other six are sealed.
Jones couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday and her apartment door was padlocked from the outside. A lawyer who represented her in family court cases declined to comment.
An email from June 17 sent to Davis by a foster care supervisor at SCO informed her that the agency was cutting her off from Zoom visits with her granddaughter due to “ongoing threats and overall safety concerns surrounding the birthmother and her children.” But Davis denied that any threats were made against Jones and said she never got a response when she asked SCO what they were referring to.
A case planner with SCO emailed Davis on July 10 to say “the agency have ongoing visits” with Julissia, who was on what it described as a “trial discharge” with her birth mom.
That email said that the child was “doing well.”
The girl’s body was found about a month later. Her mom told cops the girl fell and hit her head on a desk, according to sources.
The child’s 17-year-old half-brother later admitted during questioning that he had punched his sister eight times in the face when their mother went to the store around 5 a.m. — though the blows were not what ultimately killed her, sources said.
Hours later, the girl started throwing up and passed out, prompting her mom to call 911. Julissia was rushed to Lincoln Hospital but could not be saved.
No criminal charges have been filed and no one is in custody.
“She was a beautiful kid. She was a good kid,” Davis said of her late granddaughter. “She didn’t deserve that.”
