A Kenansville woman made her first court appearance Wednesday in connection with the drowning death of her stepson in October.
Cheyenne Star Fite, 25, was arrested Tuesday and charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child. She is being held in the Osceola County Jail on no bond, and is scheduled for a hearing Thursday to determine if she should remain in jail prior to any trial.
According to court records, the 5-year-old drowned in a muddy hole dug on the Kenansville Road property she lived on, and was responsible for him and two other children on Oct. 11 as they played on the property that was wet and muddy following Hurricane Milton. When Osceola Sheriff's deputies arrived at the home around 5:30 p.m. responding to a 9-1-1 drowning call, the child was found naked and unconscious. The boy was rushed HCA Osceola Florida East ER and pronounced dead.
According to the arrest report, when interviewed at the hospital Fite said she allowed the children to play in the yard since the home had no electricity after the hurricane. One of the children yelled the boy was underwater, and Fite said she initially did not believe it and only found the boy in the muddy hole, dug that day to drain storm flooding on the property, after she realized he had been missing for a while.
While Fite originally told detectives she was feet away when the boy drowned, the report said they determined the trailer she was folding clothes in was "approximately a football field in length from the trailer to the hole ... with multiple objects obstructing the view." Those objects included a 6-foot dirt pile, piles of scrap metal, another trailer and tall trees.
Based on the evidence, and the results of a search warrant of the home described as a "chaotic and cluttered environment" where "the air was heavy and had an aroma of urine," investigators charged Fite with the child's death, noting "culpable negligence when she failed to provide the child with care and supervision, that would have maintained the child’s physical health that a prudent person would consider essential for the well-being of the child."
