NEW YORK, NY January 12, 2006 —The medical examiner says a 7-year-old girl in Bedford Stuyvesant Brooklyn died from injuries she sustained after being physically abused. Her mother has been charged with manslaughter and her boyfriend with murdering the child. The two had been reported twice for child abuse within the last 9 months.

REPORTER: Police allege that Nixzmary Brown was tied to a chair before she was found dead on the floor of the apartment on Green Avenue that she shared with five other siblings her mother and her mother's boyfriend. An autopsy revealed she died from a being hit in the head with a blunt object.

She also had other injuries that were at different stages of healing. At 36 pounds, the child was also incredibly small for her age. Mayor Bloomberg said he was confident the administration for children's services would thoroughly investigate the case.

BLOOMBERG: I think it is clearly something to worry about. It is a great tragedy. A seven year-old is dead. ACS was called. Somebody alerted them and they tried to do an investigation. Obviously not fast enough.

REPORTER: The young girl attended PS 256 and the Department of Educations says the school reported the family to the Administration for Childrens services two different times. Once in the spring of last year after she missed more than a month of school and then again in the fall when they suspected she was being physically abused.

ACS confirms being in the home in May but says the child abuse complaint was found to be unsubstantiated. They were also in the home in December and were in the process of investigating the second complaint. The remaining five children have been removed from the home and will be placed in foster care.

Police say 27 year old Cesar Rodriguez is the father of two of the children. Teresa Rowell lives next door to the family and says during the summer she used to see the kids playing in the park across the street:

ROWELL: They wasn't malnourished they was always clean. They didn't look like nothing was wrong but you never know.

REPORTER: She and some friends were standing around a modest shrine they had put up to help memorialize the child.

ROWELL: We put this up, decided to get a candle you know, maybe other people will come and put something up if it's nothing but a candle and write something on the wall.

REPORTER: This is the fifth child known to the child welfare systems that's died in Brooklyn in just over three months. ACS says while its rare to have so many deaths clustered together, overall deaths are down in 2005 compared to 2004.