PHOENIX — A court document released Tuesday says the teenage sister of a missing 5-year-old Arizona girl told police that her mother instructed her to lie about the girl’s disappearance, that her mother had kept the girl in a closet, and that the girl had black eyes, cuts and bruises before she was reported missing.
The document was released minutes after the girl’s mother, Jerice Hunter, had her first court appearance, during which she proclaimed her innocence.
“I’d just like to be given the chance to prove my innocence,” Hunter told a judge, who ordered that she be held on $100,000 bail because of her history of child abuse and the seriousness of the charge.
Hunter was arrested on a felony count of child abuse Monday, more than five weeks after she reported her daughter Jhessye Shockley missing. Police said at a news conference that they received new information in the case that led to her arrest and to a second search of her apartment in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale.
Investigators declined to say what that information was. But the court document details a recent interview they conducted with Hunter’s 13-year-old daughter, who was removed from the home last month by state Child Protective Services.
The document, a probable-cause statement, said the teenager recently began to talk to her foster mother about Jhessye, telling her “she was told by her mother, Jerice, to lie to police about Jhessye being missing.” Police then interviewed the teen, who told them she did not see Jhessye the day she disappeared, reversing her previous story to authorities that she had seen the girl.
She also said that several weeks ago, Hunter became angry when she returned home to find Jhessye wearing a long T-shirt while watching TV with a neighbor boy, telling the girl that she was a “ho” before taking her into a bedroom, according to the document.
