PORT TOWNSEND — While a Seattle juvenile court judge wrestles with what to do with a 13-year-old baby-sitter held in connection with the death of a 19-month-old Port Townsend girl, the baby’s family tries to cope with the loss.
The baby girl, Freya Melody Hazel Garden, died Sunday evening after being rushed from West Seattle to Harborview Medical Center, Seattle police reported.
Seattle police and Peninsula Daily News are not naming the teen baby-sitter — a friend of the Port Townsend mother who was at a family gathering in West Seattle — because she is a juvenile.
The girl admitted she hurt the child, police said Monday.
The King County medical examiner completed an autopsy in the child, but says cause of death is pending further investigation.
The baby-sitter made her first appearance in King County Juvenile Court before Judge Patricia Clark on Tuesday.
The Port Townsend girl, who turned 13 in November, was ordered to remain in juvenile detention until King County prosecutors determined whether she committed a crime.
Outspoken against abuse
“It’s just a tragedy,” said Rose Harris, a decade-long friend of the child’s mother, Morningstar Garden, 27, of Port Townsend.
Harris described Garden as an outspoken community activist against child abuse.
“Freya just rearranged the whole matrix of it, and the whole community goes through a change now — nobody had addressed the child-to-child abuse in the past,” Harris said.
Garden declined to comment, but plans to release a statement to the news media soon, Harris said.