FENTON, Mo. – Two-year-old Jozi Woodall died Aug. 13 after being air-evacuated out of a foster home. It was a home that police alleged in a probable cause statement had “human feces on the floor, walls, stained on mattresses,” and “molded food on the floors and in the children’s bed.”
The foster mother, 25-year-old Alyssa Jackson, is charged with felony child abuse.
“They said she passed a background check,” Jozi’s birth mother, Sarah Woodall, said. “When I got there, the hospital told me she was completely brain dead. How that would have happened–I have no idea, and that was not an accident.”
She says she lost custody of two of her children around nine months ago, when struggling with mental health issues that she says she’s now overcome.
“Eight weeks of parenting classes,” Woodall said, “I’ve completed those. They wanted me to see a psychiatrist and a therapist. I’ve done all those.”
Two of Woodall’s children were in the defendant’s foster home in St. Robert, Missouri, that August day.