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[h1]Westwego couple relocates after their 3-month-old daughter covered in rat bites found dead[/h1] [h3]by Allen Powell II, The Times-Picayune[/h3]
[h3]Friday July 17, 2009, 12:12 PM[/h3]
The mother of a dead 3-month-old daughter found covered in rat bites said Friday that she heard rodents moving in the walls of her home.
RUSTY COSTANZA / THE TIMES-PICAYUNECasey Marie Laine, second from left, is comforted by her aunt, Dawn Camardelle, left, cousin Bernadette Perez, second from right, and mother, Lisa Lenormand, right, in Westwego on Friday, July 17, 2009.Laine is the mother of three-month-old Natalie Marie Hill who was found dead, covered with rat bites, in her Westwego home on Thursday.
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Casey Laine, her fiance, Robby Hill, and their two children, Natalie, who was found dead Thursday, and a 14-month-old boy, had lived in the house the 700 block of Central Avenue for two years. She said she had complained to the landlord about the rodent problem, but he never did anything to address it.
"You can hear them in the walls,'' Laine said of the rats. "We did everything we could to protect our baby. I would never ever hurt my children.''
Laine said that the family is moving into a cousin's house.
Natalie Hill
Laine said that little Natalie had just started smiling. She said she called the baby her "little butterfly,'' and every time she referred to her by that name, the infant would grin.
"It hurts. It feels like a piece of me is just gone me,'' she said sobbing. "That was my little butterfly.''
Natalie's father, Robbie Hill, told WRNO 99.5 FM this morning that he did what he could to protect his two children.
Hill said comments by the station's listeners that he and his wife didn't properly care for their infant daughter were heartbreaking.
"I did know they had a rat problem. I was doing what I had to do. I put out pellets, poison and traps," Hill said in the interview with WRNO's Michael Castner. "They should have trapped up that rat before it did what it did to my baby girl."
Natalie was in her crib and covered in hundreds of bites, with the most severe injuries to her nose and right leg, police said.
Rick Dietz, general curator at the Audubon Zoo, said it is entirely plausible that a large rodent would attack a 3-month-old baby and even kill it.
In the reptile field, researchers are taught never to feed live mice to snakes, since rodents have been known to chew up their predators if given enough time, he said.
"They can be very destructive to other animals or even humans, if put in a situation where they're hungry and there's nothing else to feed on," Dietz said.
Typically, mice and rats will seek out their food in garbage dumps or pantries, rather than attack and feed on other animals, he said. Rodents would also sooner attack dead creatures than live ones, since the dead make for easier targets. But Dietz believes a large rat could kill a baby, since infants would have a harder time fending it off.
"I'd say it's possible," he said. "We have some big rats around here that could do damage in short amount of time.''
Hill said he believed his daughter died before the attack.
"If a rat was to get to that baby's nose, we could have heard if that baby would scream. That baby had to be dead before them rats got to her," Hill said. "If a rat was to crawl up in your crib and bite you on the nose one time, my little girl would have jumped, possibly swung her arms and the rat should have ran."
The couple's other child, a 14-month old boy, was taken into protective custody by the state Thursday, according to Trey Williams, communication director with Department of Social Services. The child is in foster care in the New Orleans area, he said.
Williams could not provide specifics about what caused officials to remove the child from his parents, saying only that officials are continuing to investigate the matter.
"Removing a child from home is never easy decision and one we take seriously," he said. It's also one never done alone, but in conjunction with law enforcement, courts and community partners."
A police officer was stationed outside the child's home as a code enforcement officer and the city's building inspector were preparing to assess the property.
