Six months after being arrested for abusing her two children, a Nashua-based young mother has now been charged with beating her 3-year-old daughter to death.
Katlyn Main, 25, from Nashua in New Hampshire, appeared before the district court in Nashua via video link on Monday, two days after she was charged with second-degree murder. Marin remained silent the entire time.
Marin allegedly assaulted her daughter, Brielle Gage, many times on 24 and 25 November that eventually led to her death. A call was made to 911 from the family's home in Nashua and Brielle was rushed to the hospital on 25 November, where she died a while later.
The autopsy revealed that the toddler died of blunt force injuries and her death was ruled as homicide.
"Under the law in New Hampshire, the district court has no jurisdiction to set bail in a murder case, and once the case moves to Superior Court, the presumption is the defendant will be held without bail," said Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeff Strelzin, WMUR reports.
The mother-of-five was arrested Friday, around a month after Brielle's death was ruled a homicide.
Prosecutors said she "recklessly caused the death of her daughter under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to the value of human life".
Marin's first child was born when she was just 16 years old. The other four children are now placed in foster care. The young mother is a repeat offender and was previously also arrested for abusing her children.
Marin and her live-in boyfriend Michael Rivera, 30, were arrested in May for allegedly abusing two boys at their home. The arrest came after one of the boys' guidance counsellors alerted the authorities.
That time, Marin was charged with one count of second-degree assault and one count of simple assault; while Rivera was charged with two counts of second-degree assault and one count of simple assault.
According to Daily Mail, the Division for Children Youth and Families stated that the two boys, an eight-year-old who had bruises all over his body, and another six-year-old were probably being abused at home.
The children reported said that the couple beat them with belts. All the children, including the nine-month-old baby, had bruises on their bodies. The six-year-old boy had informed investigators that Marin and Rivera allowed them to eat just once a day and he was even beaten once when he tried eating food that he had hidden away.
Meanwhile, Brielle's grandmother, Shron Boucher, wrote in a Facebook post that her granddaughter was returned by the family court to Marin even though child abuse charges against her were pending.
"We want to bring awareness to the issue of child abuse and how [the Department of Health and Human Services] and the court system failed my granddaughter," she wrote.
Boucher has created a memorial page for the late toddler on the social networking site and also a GoFundMe page to help cover the cost for the girl's funeral.
"No family should ever have to suffer the pain we are feeling," she wrote.
