MIAMI — A Miami mother accused of murdering her two young children told detectives her “kids were suffering and that they would suffer less if they were dead,” according to a police report.
Odette Joassaint, 41, was booked into a Miami-Dade jail early Wednesday on two counts of first-degree murder.
According to the arrest report, Joassaint confessed that she tied her children’s arms, legs and necks together. Then she used a red ribbon to strangle them Tuesday evening, she told detectives. The victims: Laural Belval, 5, and Jeffrey Belval, 3.
Their father, Frantzy Belval, told the Miami Herald that the children lived with Joassaint full time, although they would normally visit him once a week on Saturdays.
“They loved me so much,” the grieving Belval said. “Every week, I buy clothes for the kids.”
Belval painted a picture of Joassaint as an unstable mother who had not worked for a year, and had been begging to move back in with him. He said he’d consistently refused.
“I told her, ‘You are crazy. You create too much problems,’” Belval said.
Officer rushed to the scene in Little River Tuesday night after Joassaint called 911 from her apartment home on the 100 block of Northeast 75th Street. She told officers to “come get them, I don’t want them anymore,” police said.
“She was having a mental crisis and was irate,” said Miami Police spokesman Michael Vega.
What police found inside left even veteran cops reeling: the two kids, lying in bed face-down on a bed, hogtied.
Officers and Miami Fire Rescue tried desperately to resuscitate the children.
During hours of questioning, the distraught Jossaint, 41, told police she “had been having financial issues.”
The children’s father told The Herald that Joassaint had lost custody of a third child, a 14-year-old girl, a claim that could not immediately be verified.
The couple had come to the attention of police and state child welfare authorities in the past. In March, Belval said, the police were called to Joassaint's apartment when they got into an argument in front of the children. No one was arrested.
In 2017, Joassaint was arrested for misdemeanor battery in Homestead after police said she got into a heated argument with Belval over money. She’d bitten Belval, leaving teeth marks on his arm, and was “the primary aggressor,” according to a police report. Prosecutors wound up dropping the case.
Two years later, when Joassaint was pregnant with their youngest, Belval was arrested in North Miami Beach on a charge of aggravated battery. He was accused of striking Joassaint — who sported a swollen eye and small cut on her lip — during an argument over her being on the phone too long.
Joassaint, however, refused to give a statement to the police. Prosecutors did not press the charge.
She did, however, go to family court to get a restraining order, alleging multiple instances of abuse. Among the allegations: that he threatened to pour boiling water on her, and “brandished” his gun and threatened to shoot her.
A permanent injunction was issued, but later withdrawn after Joassaint wrote the court saying they wished to “reconcile for our children’s well being.”
Her petition also noted that the Florida Department of Children and Families (has) gotten involved in the past.” The extent of DCF’s involvement with the family was not immediately clear on Wednesday.
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