What happened to Isabella ‘Ariel’ Kalua, six-year-old who died in care of adoptive parents
Big sister says child was kept in a dog cage with hands and nose taped over
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The biological family of Isabella “Ariel” Kalua is considering legal action against the state of Hawaii after they placed the six-year-old girl with an adoptive family under whose care she later died.
The adoptive parents have been charged with murder and Ariel’s biological family may now sue state officials for incompetence.
“All options are on the table,” Ariel’s aunt Lana Idao told KITV4. “We’ll keep fighting and never let her name ... be put back into a corner, to make sure we learn from this and we carry it out for her. To make sure no other children go through the same thing she went through.”
Last week, Isaac and Lehua Kalua were charged with second-degree murder.
Honolulu police have said that Ariel may have been dead for a month before the parents reported her missing on 13 September and then allegedly concealed her death.
Ariel was last seen alive on 18 August, and her adoptive parents claim that she “wandered off” from their home in the Hawaii capital.
Legal filings revealed last week that Ariel’s big sister saw the child dead in a dog cage with her mouth and nose taped over. Her body has not yet been found.
Relatives of the girl told the Honolulu Star Advertiser that Ariel and her four siblings were removed from their biological mother, 33-year-old Melanie Joseph, and her former boyfriend Adam Sellers as they were experiencing drug addiction and were homeless at times.
Ariel had been in the foster care of her adoptive parents for four years and was officially adopted within the last two years.
Bed Moszkowicz at the Honolulu Police Department told Local 12 that following the formal adoption of a child, caseworkers don’t check as often on their wellbeing.
Records have revealed that both Isaac Kalua, 52, and Lehua Kalua, 47, have decades-long criminal pasts.
In 2001, Mr Kalua pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree terroristic threatening, two counts of second-degree assault, as well as one count of attempted second-degree assault. In 2000, Ms Kalua was indicted on felony drug promotion, charges that were dismissed after she finished a drug treatment programme ordered by a court.
Honolulu City Councilmember Esther Kia’aina, a Democrat, asked: “Did the system fail her and were there enough signs for her to be taken out of that home earlier?”
“The government is there to provide for mechanisms to ensure that our children are safeguarded and I am not quite sure if those processes were followed,” she said, according to Local 12.
Ariel’s 12-year-old sister was asked by the adoptive parents to keep the child’s death a secret. The request was revealed in an interview the sister did with a detective on 5 November, a record of which was included in court documents.
The parents have pleaded not guilty and are being held without bail.
Court documents say that the older sister knew Ariel was “dead because she was there”.
“Lehua then filled the bathtub with water and put (Isabella) in it to see if she would wake up, but it did not work,” the legal filing stated. The sister then had to help carry Ariel to the bedroom, the documents said.
The adoptive parents had formally adopted Ariel and two of her siblings and were fostering a fourth biological sibling.
The sister told police that Mr Kalua pretended to have symptoms of Covid-19 and went to the hospital. She said she knew he didn’t really have Covid-19 because he took time off work to “help mom” to “get rid of the stuff” as well as “evidence”.
The sister said the adoptive parents bought the dog cage despite not having a dog because Ariel would get up at night to get food because she wasn’t being fed.
The parents’ next appearance in court is set for 26 November.