Killer Boyfriend Starves 4 Year Old To Death, Thinks He's Going Home

On March 11, 2018, police responded to a 911 call about a four-year-old girl named Anaya who was having trouble breathing. When officers arrived, they found the child emaciated—weighing approximately 20 pounds, her bones protruding through her skin like a skeleton. The officers immediately recognized this wasn't a child who had fallen ill over a few days. This was a child who had been starved over months. Her mother's boyfriend, 26-year-old Deontay Lewis, insisted he had done nothing wrong and believed he would be going home that night.

The Interrogation

The transcript captures Lewis's lengthy police interview, where he maintains that Anaya was healthy, active, and well-fed. "I don't think there's a coincidence that she has a black eye, bump on her head, a burn on her leg," one detective tells him. "And it just sort of happened."

Lewis offers explanations for each injury. The black eye came from a fall off the toilet while she was trying to make soup. The marks on her legs? Johnson & Johnson baby soap, he claims. The tooth missing from her mouth? He didn't notice it until that day. When shown a photograph of Anaya's skeletal frame, Lewis admits, "I see it," but insists the weight loss happened in just the last week.