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13-Year-Old Girl Dies After Being Mysteriously Dumped At Massachusetts Emergency Room
"From what one of the police officers said at the hospital, she was brought in and dumped at the hospital. They said she was lifeless. No pulse, no nothing, they just drove in and dropped her off," Chloe Ricard's stepfather said.
Authorities are investigating the death of a 13-year-old Massachusetts girl who was mysteriously dropped off at a hospital emergency room, lifeless and without a pulse.
The family of Chloe Ricard said they have heard varying accounts of the circumstances surrounding her death, including that she may have been dropped off at the hospital by an older man after spending the day with friends.
"From what one of the police officers said at the hospital, she was brought in and dumped at the hospital. They said she was lifeless. No pulse, no nothing, they just drove in and dropped her off," the girl's stepfather, Brian Dolan, told Boston news station WFXT. "She didn't even have a pulse when they pushed her out of the car."
Ricard’s mother, Deborah Goldsmith-Dolan, told the station she had dropped her daughter off at a friend’s house Sunday afternoon. Her daughter didn’t have a cell phone, but later texted her mother using a friend’s phone asking to spend the night. Goldsmith-Dolan told her daughter no, but never heard back and later texted her daughter’s friend to ask whether Ricard was safe.
"When I called the other friend, she said she was safe,” she said.
Her mother began to grow concerned Monday after being contacted by Chloe’s DCF case worker who told her there were “red flags” suggesting Ricard may have been planning to run away, according to The Boston Globe.
Around 4 p.m. Monday, Goldsmith-Dolan still hadn’t heard from her daughter and went to the police station to file a missing person’s report. She got a text about 40 minutes later from a friend saying that Ricard had been dropped at the hospital.
The teen’s stepfather said he heard she had been dropped off at the hospital by a 47-year-old man, but the Essex District Attorney’s office has not confirmed that account.
Prosecutors plan to review the case and said it is an “active and fluid investigation” and that no arrests have been made. The state medical examiner will perform an autopsy to determine the teen’s cause of death.
Goldsmith-Dolan said she’s still in “shock” after learning of her daughter’s death.
“I want justice. I want justice now,” she told WFXT.
Family say Ricard, who was the youngest of three children, was deeply affected by her father’s death about five years ago. She tried to cope with the loss by drawing and had wanted to become a tattoo artist.
She was a student at the Solstice Day School, a private school that provides students with “trauma informed care,” but had attended Amesbury Middle School before she made the switch to the alternative program, The Daily News reports.
Amesbury School Superintendent Jared Fulgoni issued a statement on Wednesday that remembered the teen.
"Chloe was a talented young artist," he said. "She was creative and found that she could sometimes best express herself through her artwork. She was kind to the younger students in the school and she showed great empathy for others. We will miss her smile, her creativity and her huge heart.
Ricard’s family is now left grabbling with the sudden loss.
"I just can’t believe someone can be so mean and so cruel," her mother said.
