Newport News woman convicted of murder regrets not standing up for her abused daughters
May 14, 2011|By Ashley Kelly, akelly@dailypress.com | 757-247-4778
NEWPORT NEWS — On the way to the hospital, 17-month-old Angeli Callender laid in her mother's arms. She could barely breathe.
Lillian Callender tried to give her daughter CPR, but it didn't work. It was March 1, 2010, and Callender's last chance to save her daughter's life. Her efforts were too late. Angeli's brain had swelled. She eventually went into a coma and doctors put her on life support.
"She looked like she was sleeping, but she had tubes running all through her body," Callender said.
When Angeli died two days later, her mother was not at her bedside — she was being questioned by police. A month later Callender and her boyfriend, Michael Stoffa, were charged with second-degree murder and two counts of felony child neglect.
Callender's crime was not inflicting the blow that killed her daughter. Her crime was standing by while Stoffa, 26, abused Angeli and her 2-year-old sister Yessenia, according to police. It's a crime that Callender may never forgive herself for, she said in a recent interview at Hampton Roads Regional Jail. Callender, 23, was convicted in January of felony murder. She will be sentenced in July. Stoffa's trial is scheduled for later this month. He declined to be interviewed.
Angeli is one of at least five children on the Peninsula and surrounding area who were killed by a parent or caregiver in the past year. Several other children have been severely abused and neglected. Two weeks ago, a Gloucester girl was found confined in a makeshift cage, wallowing in her own waste. In the backyard of the girl's home police dug up the remains of a child buried in a wooden box. This past week, the remains of a newborn boy were found in a plastic bag in storage bin in Newport News. Those cases are under investigation.
Details of how the deceased children were tormented vary.
Seventeen-month-old Jireh Gayles had human bite marks on his body when police found him dead last summer. Charles Poertner, 7, died from severe dehydration and only weighed 28 pounds when authorities found him dead on his living room floor. He'd been there for days.
Angeli and Yessenia were hit, kicked, punched and slapped by Stoffa in the two months prior to her death, according to the criminal complaint. Stoffa wasn't the children's biological father, but he was the man Callender thought they needed in their lives, she said.
"I needed someone to help me take care of me and my kids," Callender said. "I needed a positive male model."
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