The 46-year-old guardian of a young girl who was found severely malnourished and bruised appeared in court Friday on an indictment charging her with five counts of assault and seven counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment.
Larissa Danielle Ducan’s arrest this week followed last month’s arrest of the girl’s father, Javon Markquez Ingram, 30.
Police and prosecutors allege the two brutalized the girl and withheld necessary medical care from January 2019 through November 2021.
The girl has since been placed with a grandmother, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Police first responded to Randall Children’s Hospital on Nov. 2, 2021, where the 5-year-old arrived by ambulance. Ingram had earlier brought his daughter to an urgent care center, unsure if she was suffering from seizures or throwing a fit, according to the affidavit.
The girl’s ribs and spinal bones were visible and she had open sores around her mouth and cuts and scrapes along her arms, according to a court affidavit. Her hands and feet were swollen and her ankles were described as “completely broken down,” what doctors surmised was due to “being tied up,” the affidavit said.
“I was horrified when I saw her,” Portland Detective Todd Christensen testified in court last week.
He said the girl had sores all over her face and mouth and on the bridge of her nose. The girl made statements that she would have socks stuffed in her mouth and was tied up when she did something that someone in the house didn’t like, the detective said.
She begged the officers not to leave her alone after they had first met her in the hospital, Christensen testified.
Police obtained 27 videos from Ingram’s phone that captured the alleged abuse of the girl, Christensen said.
In one video, the girl had a sweatshirt covering her head and she was duct-taped in a high chair wearing a blindfold with tape across her mouth, the detective said.
In another, the girl was strapped into a high chair wearing a helmet, eyes blindfolded and her arms tied up, he said. Another video depicted the girl appearing delirious, running laps inside a small home and crashing into things while her father yelled, “keep going, keep going,” Christensen testified.
The girl hadn’t learned how to use the toilet and wasn’t attending school, according to police.
Ingram told investigators he gained custody of his daughter when she was 2. Her mother was addicted to methamphetamine, according to the affidavit.
Ingram lived with Ducan and her husband and he described them as his parents, though they weren’t related, according to police and prosecutors. He said they cared for his daughter when he was at work, according to court testimony.
Ingram’s defense lawyer, Ted Occhialino, identified Larissa Ducan as the girl’s legal guardian.
Doctors said the girl weighed only 29 ½ pounds and showed signs of what they diagnosed as “torture” when her father brought her into Randall Children’s Hospital last fall, court records allege.
Police obtained a warrant to search the family’s home in the 10200 block of Southeast Liebe Street last November and detectives found multiple zip ties, duct tape and a dog shock collar next to a bed in the loft, according to court documents.
The girl told investigators she was given only blended food to eat, Deputy District Attorney Rachna H. Hajari said.
Hajari argued in court last week that Ingram “continually inflicted unimaginable violence against his child” for up to three years. She successfully convinced a judge to hold him without bail.
Ducan also is being held without bail. A hearing to determine whether bail will be set for Ducan hasn’t been scheduled yet.
