What went wrong in the case of a two-year-old girl who was killed by her father?

The mother had been trying to protect her two-year-old daughter. In a motion last year, she told the court that her daughter should not be left unsupervised in the care of her father, who had been involuntarily committed several times, heard voices, chased her around their Pembroke Pines home, abused the family dog and hit inanimate objects.

But eventually those concerns dissipated. Months after the mother first raised her concerns, the parents’ lawyers filed a time-sharing plan that a Broward judge approved. The girl would stay unsupervised with Jeronimo Duran, 33, every other weekend and one night a week. Once she started school, supervision would be 50/50.

Then, on Tuesday morning, police say, Duran slit his 2-year-old daughter’s throat at the same Pembroke Pines home while she was visiting him as part of her parents’ time-sharing plan. Even as more details emerge about what happened that morning, it remains unclear why the girl ended up alone with him despite efforts to avoid that scenario. Neither the child’s mother nor the parents’ attorneys have responded to requests for comment.

“Unfortunately, this case is an irreversible tragedy for a variety of reasons that I think could have been avoided,” said Michael Grieco, a criminal defense attorney and former congressman from Miami Beach who co-sponsored one of the earlier versions of “Greyson’s Law,” created in response to the death of another child at the hands of his father. “I don’t know if it could have been avoided legislatively. If it could have been avoided in the courtroom. If it could have been avoided among the lawyers involved. But there clearly wasn’t enough advocacy for the little girl, and that’s the problem.”

Around 9:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, Duran’s grandmother came home to find him lying on top of his daughter. She called 911 and told the caller in Spanish to send someone quickly. The girl was pale and unresponsive, she said in a panic, according to a recording of the call released by police Thursday. Police later said she was bleeding profusely from the neck that Duran had injured. Paramedics took the girl to the hospital, where she later died. Duran is now charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse.

Jeronimo Duran, 33, is accused of violently killing his daughter by murder and child abuse, as well as aggravated child abuse, court records show. (Broward Sheriff’s Office/Courtesy)

A similar tragedy, also described as preventable, occurred in Broward almost three years to the day in May 2021. Alison Kessler received threats from the father of her four-year-old son Greyson. He had been tracking her with a device and knew she was going to the Broward court to get a restraining order against him.

“You have caused me a huge amount of problems,” he said in one message. “I was never angry before I met you.”

Another read: “You deserve to have your head severed from your body. But I’m not the violent type. God will take care of you.”

Kessler knew Greyson was in trouble. She spoke to the police and asked for permission to pick up her son in an emergency. But when the police finally arrived at the father’s apartment, it was too late. Greyson’s father had killed his son and then himself in a murder-suicide. A day later, the judge denied her request.

Kessler had only learned of the two-year-old girl’s death a few days after Greyson’s death.

“My reaction was: I can’t believe this is happening again,” she told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Wednesday. “And I can’t believe our justice system is so flawed.”

After Greyson’s death, Kessler became an activist and spent the next two years fighting to pass a law that would prevent situations like hers from happening in the future.

A watered-down version of Greyson’s Law will take effect in July 2023. It requires judges to consider more factors when deciding custody or time-sharing, particularly a parent’s reasonable fear that their child is or has been in “imminent danger” of domestic violence, abuse or neglect. It also expands the definition of domestic violence, including whether someone has “engaged in a pattern of abusive, threatening, intimidating or controlling behavior consisting of a series of acts over a period of time, however short.”

Such a definition could describe Duran’s behavior, particularly his chasing the girl’s mother and punching walls, a fan and the family dog, as the mother alleged in court papers last year. Police had been called to the home twice last year, records show, though it’s unclear whether those calls were domestic violence related. Public records requests for police reports about Duran and the incidents at the home were not answered Thursday.

Another red flag cited in the court filing was Duran’s history of severe mental health issues, which some said would have lent the mother’s fears more legal credibility. According to the mother’s court filing, he had been incarcerated five times under the Baker Act and reported hearing voices telling him to kill himself, even when his daughter was home. She wrote that he did not take his medication and instead self-medicated with drugs. Duran later denied those claims but admitted he suffered from an unspecified mental illness for which he was receiving treatment.

“If you have multiple Baker Acts, you now have a record that clearly shows you have a history of mental health issues that require involuntary hospitalization,” Grieco said. “Then the allegations in the court record are much more substantiated than if it’s just a collection of unprovable allegations.”

The mother had previously requested a psychological evaluation of Duran, a guardian ad litem, sole custody, and that her child not be allowed to visit him unsupervised.

“His behavior is unpredictable, aggressive, violent and dangerous for the mother and the minor child,” her court filing states.

But in March of this year, the parents signed a schedule for sharing time that was drastically different from what the mother had previously wanted, and Broward County Circuit Court Judge Kristin Kanner approved it. Kanner did not respond to an email late Thursday afternoon and her office referred inquiries to the court administrator, who did not respond to a voicemail.

Rod Stafford Hagwood / South Florida Sun Sentinel

Alison Kessler in front of the tree in Plantation’s Deicke Park dedicated to her son Greyson Kessler. The 4-year-old was killed by his father in a murder-suicide in 2021. Kessler has become an activist for Greyson’s Law to protect children at risk of being hurt by their parents. (Rod Stafford Hagwood/South Florida Sun Sentinel-File)

“I don’t know what happened, why the mother agreed to the parenting plan,” said Democratic Sen. Lori Berman of Boca Raton, who sponsored the bill that became Greyson’s Law in 2022 and 2023. “I will never assign blame to any parent in this situation. I will never blame any parent in this situation. But I am very sad that the end result was the loss of this child’s life and that Greyson’s Law, despite everything we did, did not save this child in the end.”

Many parents are unaware of Greyson’s Law or other rights they have in family situations. They often face tremendous pressure to settle the dispute both financially and legally. Kessler said that in her own custody battle, she felt she had to reach an agreement with Greyson’s father during mediation or the judge would label her as uncooperative.

“We have no choice,” she said. “Unless we want to risk the judge taking our child away from us because we don’t cooperate. We have to reach an agreement in mediation.”

Money can also be a deciding factor. Many people don’t have the means for a lengthy legal battle, Grieco said. Often, victims are financially dependent on their abusers. The mother in Duran’s case, then a veterinary technician whose most prized possessions were her car and an $800 mattress, wrote in her court filing that he was better able to pay child support and that she “definitely had a need.”

Experts agree that tragedies like this happen far too often. In March, a 2-year-old boy and his mother were found dead in a home in Plantation, where Kessler lives. The father attempted suicide but survived and is now charged with first-degree murder.

“It’s happening at an alarming rate,” Kessler said. Every day, she is contacted by parents who need help or advice. Some say that referring them to Greyson’s Law helped save their own child.

Berman said more parents could be helped by better education about the law. Grieco believes one possible solution is to appoint a guardian ad litem in every case in which a parent exhibits severe mental health problems. Kessler continues to fight for more police interventions and for the legal system to better understand all forms of domestic violence.

“It’s really hard to prove domestic violence if you don’t have physical scars,” she said.

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