A five year old girl is still suffering from traumatic injuries at the hand of her father when she was 16 months old.
“I was heart broken, not in a very good place,” Nevarha’s Mother Casey Ketcherside said. “I couldn’t believe that someone could do that to a child, let alone a child as good as her. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that, how could you hurt an innocent little girl like that.”
Nevaeha was just 16 months old when she went to her biological father’s house in Lubbock for visitation, the third full weekend in a row.
That weekend, Ketcherside received a call from him, Johnny Herrera, telling her Nevaeha was in the hospital.
“He said she fell off the kitchen counter, why she was on the kitchen counter I have no idea,” said Ketcherside. “Then next thing I know cops are being called and they’re telling me she had been a victim of child abuse and that’s what her injuries were.”
Doctors told her Nevaeha suffered from a traumatic brain injury, along with bruised ribs and a bite mark on her chin.
Based on these claims, police conducted an investigation that led to child abuse.
“His other two children are the ones that told the detectives what had happened because they were there when it happened,” Ketcherside said. “I was speechless because I had known him for years.”
Knowing Herrera since high school, Ketcherside said she didn’t at first believe he could have committed these crimes.
Later in Lubbock County Court, Herrera was convicted on a felony charge of child injury. He’s now serving a thirty year sentence at Coffield Unit State Prison.
Four years later, Nevaeha still suffers from those injuries.
“She still doesn’t have a lot of head control,” Ketcherside said. “We’re working on standing. Her speech therapist is working on trying to get her to eat orally so we can get her off the G-button. At the moment we’re trying to get her seizers under control because one minute she’ll be fine and then the next she’ll have eight in one day.”
She added that they are also working on her communication skills.
“You’re going to go through everything imaginable,” Ketcherside said. “I think one year she was having to deal with fluid on the brain, last year it was seizers, then it’s respiratory, this year it’s seizers again. It’s always something.”
Ketcherside said speaking up and reporting any suspicion could have reduced the risk of continued child abuse.
“What makes me so angry is people don’t want to get involved,” Ketcherside said. “This is what happens when you don’t get involved. My friend’s little boy. That’s what happens when you don’t get involved. This can be a result if you don’t say something. And it’s one of the worst things you could possibly go through. Don’t ever think that it’s going to happen to you, until it does.”
Anyone who needs to report child abuse can contact the local Child Protective Services at 762-2680. If it is an emergency call 911.