On Sept. 11, 23-year-old Chidalu Amobi was arrested and charged with injury to a child in the beating death of 2-year-old Khyrian Simms. According to an APD press release, Simms was severely beaten on Sept. 6, after Amobi — a stranger to the family — entered her parents’ Northeast Austin apartment. Police were called to the scene, Simms was taken to Brackenridge Hospital, and Amobi was arrested at a nearby equipment rental store. According to the APD, Amobi had gone to the Simms’ Clayton Lane residence with Roderic Whitley, a Simms family acquaintance. Whitley went inside the house to pick up a bag he’d left there when Amobi entered the apartment and attacked the 2-year-old, causing severe head injuries that cracked her skull. Khyrian Simms remained at Brackenridge and on life support until Sept. 11, when she was pronounced dead.
Angela Amobi, Chidalu’s mother, said her son has been suffering from both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and had been “losing it” in the weeks and days leading up to the incident — and that she had been trying to get him psychiatric help, but the system failed her family. Amobi said she had been trying to get her son committed to the Austin State Hospital, but MHMR doctors refused her pleas. Amobi also said she is not entirely convinced her son is the one responsible for Simms’ death. Her son had been around numerous children in her home, she said, and had never acted violently toward any of them.
But APD spokesman Paul Flaningan said police have witnesses who saw Amobi attack Simms in the apartment. The department is still investigating, Flaningan said, “but what happens now is up to the court system.” Amobi is currently in jail on $100,000 bond.
This article appears in September 27 • 2002.