A 4-year-old girl trapped in her apartment is thought to have survived by eating chocolate for two weeks after her troubled mother and brother died, and many people are claiming child protective services dropped the ball and missed the warning signs.
Gruesome police documents detail the harrowing discovery of Promise Cotton sitting alone and starving on her mother’s bed while bugs crawled over her deceased family members. Her mother, Lisa Cotton, 38, and her 8-year-old brother, Nazir Millien, had been dead for at least two weeks in their Bronx apartment when the toddler’s concerned grandfather, Hubert Cotton, sent a relative to check on them on April 18.
Lisa Cotton had been on the radar of New York’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) for years. According to law enforcement, she had an open ACS case for child neglect and a history of erratic behavior. It raises the question: Why were the hellish conditions not discovered earlier?
Neighbors say that ACS workers visited the apartment building while the tragedy was unfolding, but they left without making contact, not realizing the horrific scene taking place behind the front door.
“They didn’t do s–t,” neighbor Sabrina Coleson told the New York Post. “They were here ringing people’s bells the day before the wellness check. They were here, but they didn’t do s–t.
“One rang my bell and asked if I had any concerns for upstairs. And then a man opened his door and started yelling,” she explained. “Lisa was a very cool girl. I never saw her son with her, only the girl. It’s terrible.”
An anonymous 911 call was made on April 15, days before Promise was found, requesting a welfare check on the family. Neighbors reported a terrible stench that smelled like “death,” and told police they hadn’t seen the family for two weeks. But the cops reportedly did not detect a smell and left when no one answered the door.
According to initial reports, one neighbor said the cops “said they’d be back in a few days,” and “one of the social workers said she was trying to get a court order to have the door broken in.”
Though the official cause of death has not been released yet, sources close to the case say detectives believe Nazir, who was born prematurely and had a feeding tube, may have starved to death. Lisa Cotton suffered from asthma and may have died from cardiac arrest. Neither body had signs of trauma, according to police.
Meanwhile, 4-year-old Promise survived by “feeding herself with chocolate,” said her grandfather, Hubert Cotton, who added that she was covered with the stuff when her panicked relative found her. The family said that Promise was quickly transported to a local hospital and determined to be in stable condition. She is now living with her grandfather in his Bronx home.
“She hasn’t said anything. She’s a baby. She looks at me sometimes, you know? Like she knows something,” Hubert said of his granddaughter. “We don’t know anything, we’re trying to find out.”
Hubert believed his daughter Lisa had been struggling with bipolar disorder. In 2021, she was arrested on child abandonment charges after she was found swinging Promise around in a stroller on White Plains Road, and lighting a wig on fire. When approached by police, she walked away from her daughter, who at the time was an infant. Further details are not available as the case has been sealed.
An anonymous neighbor told the “New York Post” the mother had “episodes” in the past.
“One time she threw paint out the window and she has been talking about the devil,” the neighbor said, adding, “About a year ago, she was out here talking about the devil. . . . I didn’t know what was going on.” Another neighbor named Mark claimed she once went to the building’s rooftop with her son with the intent to commit suicide. “We called police and they took her away,” he said of the incident.
“In a sense, I blame ACS. They should have done more from the first. Why leave the kids with her?” he continued. “When they came to check on her, they shouldn’t have left. They should have been forceful.”
According to news outlets, the ACS has opened an investigation into the situation.
