Foster parent who left 20-month-old unsupervised in a bathtub is charged with murder

The foster parent of a 20-month-old who died in a Harrowgate home in April has been arrested and charged with murder.

Apalosnia Watson, 39, was arrested Jan. 14, nine months after Syvir Hill drowned in her home. She was charged with third-degree murder and endangering the welfare of a child, court records show, and was released from custody on a $500,000 unsecured bail bond as her case progressed.

Philadelphia police officers arrived at the house on the 900 block of East Schiller Street on April 15 to find medics performing CPR on an unresponsive 1-year-old, according to the arrest warrant. Watson had left Syvir and two other children alone in the bath and had gone downstairs to get food from the microwave, she told the officers that night. On her way down to the first floor, she heard “flipping in the water,” and when she returned to the second-floor room, the toddler was motionless, facedown in the water. The foster parent attempted CPR and called 911.

“I don’t want to go to jail,” Watson told the officers on the scene, according to the police report. “It happened so fast.”

S. Philip Steinberg, a Schatz Steinberg & Klayman defense attorney representing Watson, said that Watson did not act with malice, which is required for a murder charge.

“It’s a tragic accident but one that Ms. Watson would not have any criminal liability for,” Steinberg said.

The Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office conducted a postmortem exam the day following Syvir’s death, but the cause and manner of death remained pending for months. On Dec. 4, the office ruled that the cause of death was drowning and the manner of death was homicide.

A spokesperson for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said charges were brought shortly after the homicide investigation was reopened following the ruling on the manner of death.

Death investigations can vary in how long they take due to a number of factors, said James Garrow, a Philadelphia health department spokesperson.

“Above all, our priority is to conduct thorough and accurate investigations,” Garrow said in a statement.

» READ MORE: Toddler’s death in the bathtub of a Philly foster home prompts lawsuit

The long gap between the exam and the medical examiner’s ruling concerns A.J. Thomson, a Zafran Law Group attorney representing Syvir’s biological mother in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed in October against Watson and two child-welfare agencies.

Thomson filed a second lawsuit in November, asking a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge to compel the medical examiner to make a ruling. That suit accuses Lindsay Simon, the city’s chief medical examiner, of refusing to perform her mandatory public duty, “blocking the family’s ability to settle the estate, pursue insurance and benefits, and understand the cause and manner of death.”

Judge Sierra Thomas Street ordered Simon on Dec. 11 to certify the cause and manner of death within 10 days.

Thomson credited the lawsuit with pushing the medical examiner’s office to issue a finding, which ultimately came before the judge ruled.

The lawsuit from Syvir’s biological mother accuses Tabor Children’s Services and Northeast Treatment Centers of failing when they placed Syvir in the home and did not remove him even though visit notes showed a varying number of children living in the crowded house.

At the time of Syvir’s death, multiple other children lived in the home, including the 4-year-old and 2-year-old who were also in the bathtub, Hill’s 4-month-old sister, and a 17-year-old, according to the police report.

The lawsuit further alleges that after Watson left the children alone in the bath, the 2-year-old told Syvir, “you are not my brother,“ and held the toddler’s head underwater. The police report makes no such claim. The accusation comes from a child’s interview with investigators from the city’s department of human services, Thomson said.

The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services reviewed Syvir’s death and found no deficiencies in compliance with laws and regulations, and offered no recommendations for change, according to the heavily redacted publicly available version of the report.