JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — (The video above is from a previous report)
A Jacksonville woman accused of keeping her 5-year-old daughter handcuffed and starving in a locked closet is now being held on bonds totaling $950,015 following a court hearing Monday.
Alexandra Ebey, 37, is charged with five counts of child neglect and aggravated child abuse after the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office say she imprisoned her daughter in a closet for 25 days.
Ebey was arrested Dec. 14 and has pleaded not guilty.
A police report says investigators from the Department of Children and Families, responding to an anonymous child abuse tip, found Ebey’s daughter emaciated, covered in sores and injuries, with parts of her skin “falling off her body.”
The girl told investigators she was tied down with a belt and had to use the bathroom in a bucket that was kept in the same room, according to a report.
Ebey’s live-in boyfriend Kenneth Trout was arrested on similar charges. Three other children were removed from the home.
The girl the pair are alleged to have abused is doing “significantly better” and has been released from the hospital, Assistant State Attorney Kelli Lynn Shobe told the judge Monday.
Ebey’s attorney, Elizabeth Hall, said child welfare officials have begun proceedings to permanently terminate her parental rights for all four of her children.
According to DCF, Ebey initially told investigators that the child was with her grandparents, but the grandparents said they hadn’t seen her in months. Those grandparents – the deceased biological father’s-- are now caring for that girl and her three siblings, the prosecutor said Monday.
Hall asked the judge to consider lower bonds, saying the amounts requested by the prosecutor were “tantamount to no bond.”
“There is no danger to her children at this time they are outside of her care,” Hall said. “There have been no allegations about prohibited contact. There is a DCF case plan and there are proceedings to terminate her [parental] rights… We would say that there's no reasonable basis to conclude that any potential danger posed by her release could not be alleviated by other conditions.
But Shobe said that even though Ebey has no criminal record, “it would be our position that she is a much more culpable co-defendant in this case. This is her biological child. My understanding from reading the reports and the testimony of all the children involved as she was calling the shots. And so I disagree that her bond should be set lower than the co-defendant."
Her next court date is Feb. 23.