Two more people — the victim’s grandmother and a family friend — are facing charges in connection with the September death of 9-year-old Renesmay Eutsey.
Fayette County District Attorney Mike Aubele said charges were filed Tuesday against the grandmother, Theresa Marie Shipley, 63, of Scottdale, and family friend Sandra Lynn Umensetter, 51, of Connellsville.
Both women are charged by state police with three counts each of child endangerment and reckless endangerment. Shipley faces three additional counts of failure to report suspected child abuse as a mandated reporter.
An autopsy report submitted last month found Renesmay died from malnourishment and neglect, Aubele said. The autopsy showed she had blunt force trauma to the head, neck, torso and extremities.
Analysis of the cellphones of both women show they were in the Dunbar Borough home numerous times in the months leading up to Renesmay’s death in early September. Police have said two other children who lived there had been abused.
“In short, the children in the home were subject to severe child abuse and neglect over a long period of time,” Aubele said in a statement. “These two defendants were present for it and supervised these children during the times they were severely abused; they did nothing to help them.”
Both women were arrested Tuesday. They were being held at the Fayette County Prison on $100,000 bail each. Neither had an attorney listed in online court records. Preliminary hearings are set for April 29.
Homicide and aggravated assault cases are pending against two other women in connection with Renesmay’s death.
Her caregivers, Sarah Ann Shipley, 36, and Kourtney Eutsey, 32, of Dunbar Borough, are facing the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder. Both women were related to Renesmay.
Four other children, none of whom were biologically the children of Shipley or Eutsey, were removed from the home during the investigation. Two of them, then ages 11 and 6, had been subjected to abuse, according to preliminary hearing testimony.
Renesmay’s body was retrieved from the Youghiogheny River in Westmoreland County in the early morning hours of Sept. 4. She had been reported missing, but police grew suspicious after hearing inconsistent statements from Shipley and Eutsey, in light of surveillance video they obtained and information from the oldest child who lived at the house, according to preliminary hearing testimony.
A doctor testified at that hearing that the two other children suffered several forms of abuse, including having their teeth pulled out with pliers.
Shipley and Eutsey remain jailed without bail. In addition to homicide, they are facing a number of charges including aggravated assault, abuse of a corpse, conspiracy and tampering with evidence.