The mother of a girl who committed suicide on Facebook Live while in foster care may have encouraged her daughter to take her own life.
The Florida Department of Children and Families says Gina Caze was among hundreds of people watching 14-year-old Naika Venant’s Facebook livestream video the night she committed suicide in the Miami home of her foster care family.
Naika used a scarf to hang herself from a bathroom doorknob on January 22.
Caze reportedly watched about 2 hours of her daughter’s livestream, before writing a post using the name “Gina Alexis”:
“#ADHD games played u sad little DCF custody jit that’s why u where u at for this dumb s— n more u keep crying wolf u dead u will get buried life goes on after a jit that doesn’t listen to there parents trying to be grown seeking boys and girls attention instead of her books.”
2 weeks after Naika killed herself, someone reported Caze’s post to DCF.
Caze’s Facebook post conflicts with the tearful photos of her at a press conference in her lawyer’s office, in which she blame DCF for Naika’s death.
Caze’s attorney disputed the findings in the DCF report, saying the report’s allegations were “absolutely false”. The attorney claimed Caze only wrote the post after her daughter died, and because she thought the livestream video was a fake.
The teenager moved in and out of foster care between 2009 and 2017, according to the NY Daily News. Her mother gave her up in April 2016 saying she no longer wanted the girl.
Naika was reportedly removed from her mother’s home after she had been sexually and physically abused.
According to a foster care report, Naika told a counselor she feared she would “age out” of foster care and she would have nowhere else to go.
No charges have been filed against the mother.
