Child advocate attorneys who fight for at-risk youth are watching closely as Florida officials investigate the death of Antwan Hope, 4, who died a week after being reunited with his mother – and under the watch of the Florida Department of Children and Families and a contracted community-based care provider.

The death of the boy, whom his aunt described as “cute and innocent” and in need of being “rescued” from his situation, has left child advocate attorneys again asking questions. How could a boy already on DCF’s radar for past claims of abuse fall victim to the very abuse social workers were called in to prevent? In 2011, he was removed from his mother for her allegedly trying to suffocate him; in 2013, he’s gone after an unsupervised visit with her. Coral Springs police call his death “suspicious.”

“The boy’s distraught relatives said it was clear Antwan’s mom was disturbed and that she should not have had unsupervised access to him,” the Miami Herald reported. “‘They put him in the hands of death,’” the paper reported Antwan’s aunt, Deborah Jackson, as saying.

DCF officials, who contracted the boy’s case through a private Broward foster care agency, declined to discuss the matter. “We take child deaths very seriously, and we take this case very seriously,” spokeswoman Alexis Lambert told the Herald.

It’s a horrible story – one all too often repeated throughout Florida’s at-risk populations. Read the entire Miami Herald story here.