In the months before the girl's horrific death, the workers for MultiEthnic were not the only ones who failed to do their jobs - or to try to cover their tracks afterward - according to the grand-jury report.
"The fate of a sweet and promising child depended on the willingness of a number of particular adults to do the bare minimum of what they were supposed to do," the report says.
". . . Had just one of them performed their duty or done their job, Danieal would be alive today."
The DHS caseworker assigned to the family, Dana Poindexter, ignored warnings that the girl was at grave risk, the report alleges, and later lied to the grand jury to make it appear he had been doing his job.
Months after her death, a homicide detective found the case file - at the bottom of a box filled with food wrappers and dusty unopened letters, some of which were four years old.
Poindexter testified he didn't know that Kelly was entitled to go to school, or that it was against the law for a parent not to provide necessary care. "He must have been asleep during his training," one expert told the grand jury.
Pressed to provide a summary of the case a year before her death, Poindexter wrote an account that the grand jury called "pathetic," "self-serving," and "almost certainly false."
Poindexter, who had been suspended three times for poor performance, testified that he prepared many documents and put them in the Kelly case file.
"The grand jury has no doubt that he never prepared these documents," the report said. He is charged with perjury, along with endangering the welfare of children.
Reached by phone, Poindexter, 51, declined to comment. He was suspended again by DHS yesterday.
Another DHS worker, who did not bother to enter the girl's room during her last visit, backdated her report, the grand-jury report said.
