{"id":279577,"date":"2026-04-22T02:35:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T02:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/279577\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T02:35:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T02:35:17","slug":"after-san-jose-toddler-death-in-foster-care-naacp-calls-for-removal-of-county-leaders-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/279577\/","title":{"rendered":"After San Jose toddler death in foster care, NAACP calls for removal of county leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NAACP is demanding criminal investigations and the ouster of top county leaders over the death in foster care of a San Jose toddler<\/a> earlier this month, adding to the growing chorus of calls for accountability over the deaths of three children in the last three years who were in the care of the child welfare agency.<\/p>\n

In a formal complaint, San Jose\/Silicon Valley NAACP President Sean Allen said the three deaths, along with three more from 2022 outlined in a Child Death Review<\/a> report, \u201cform a pattern of preventable tragedy that can no longer be attributed to isolated failures. These deaths are the foreseeable result of deliberate policy choices, willful obstruction of oversight, and the systematic\u00a0 protection of institutional actors over vulnerable children.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NAACP sent the civil rights complaint late Monday to top county leaders and the board of supervisors as well as the county grand jury, district attorney and state Attorney General. Allen sent it\u00a0after District Attorney Jeff Rosen, in an explosive news conference Monday morning,<\/a> pledged to investigate anyone who may be criminally responsible for the death of 2-year-old Jaxon Juarez\u00a0 \u2014 including employees of the county\u2019s Department of Family and Children\u2019s Services.<\/p>\n

Targeted in the complaint from the civil rights organization are County Executive James Williams, Chief Operating Officer Greta Hansen, County Counsel Tony LoPresti, Social Services Agency Director Daniel Little, and the director of the child welfare agency, Wendy Kinnear-Rausch.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than holding accountable the individuals responsible for these failures, Santa Clara County has promoted all five of them,\u201d since 2022, the complaint said. \u201cNot one of them has faced disciplinary consequence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Allen called for the \u201cimmediate removal\u201d of Little and Kinnear-Rausch, who \u201cmust be placed on administrative leave and removed from any supervisory role\u201d over child welfare, pending investigation.<\/p>\n

The county on Tuesday did not respond directly to questions about the NAACP complaint or accountability, instead saying it is investigating the death and reviewing its polices and staff actions during Jaxon\u2019s\u00a0time in foster care. The Board of Supervisors has authority to fire the county executive, but not any agency heads. Any discipline of department heads is in the control of Williams, the county executive. The individuals named in the complaint declined, through the county, to comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing more important to the County of Santa Clara than keeping children safe,\u201d county spokesperson Peter Gallotta said in a statement. \u201cWe are committed to continuing to partner with the California Department of Social Services and all other related investigations, as appropriate, so that together, we can understand exactly what happened and continue to make any and all necessary changes to better protect vulnerable children in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jaxon Juarez, 2, died April 9<\/a> after the Department of Family and Children\u2019s Services placed him six weeks earlier with his 40-year-old cousin, who had a past felony child endangerment conviction,<\/a> and her three children. Her oldest son is now charged with murder, 6 counts of sexual assault<\/a> and felony \u201cassault with a hair tie.\u201d The boy\u2019s grandmother told the Mercury News<\/a> she saw a red line around Jaxon\u2019s neck more than a week before he died and alerted a social worker, who she says took a photo of it. Friends of Jaxon\u2019s family protested outside the juvenile court hearing Monday with handmade signs that read \u201cJustice for Jaxon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Medical Examiner has not yet released the cause of death.<\/p>\n

County officials have declined to answer questions about the foster mother\u2019s criminal record, which child welfare experts say should have made her ineligible as a foster parent, or whether social workers missed warning signs that could have saved Jaxon. The Mercury News has not independently verified the grandmother\u2019s account of a mark on the boy\u2019s neck or a photo of it.<\/p>\n

The NAACP complaint renews a similar demand from last summer<\/a> when Allen called for accountability over the 2023 fentanyl overdose death of baby Phoenix Castro, who was left in the care of her drug-abusing father despite a social worker\u2019s plea that she wouldn\u2019t be safe there, and the 2024 death of 7-year-old Jordan Walker, who was stabbed to death allegedly by an uncle after he was placed in the home of his grandmother, despite relatives concerns the home was dangerous. Phoenix\u2019s father and Jordan\u2019s uncle are both facing murder charges.<\/p>\n

At the time, the county struck back<\/a> at the NAACP, saying \u201cthere is no basis whatsoever to suggest that any county leader committed a crime associated with these tragic deaths.\u201d It went on to say that the county had \u201cdemonstrated its commitment to thoroughly evaluate and continuously improve its child welfare system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The county was nearing the end of an 18-month \u201ccorrective action plan\u201d imposed by the California Department of Social Services, brought on by baby Phoenix\u2019s death, when Jaxon died.<\/p>\n

After Jaxon\u2019s death, the state said in a statement that \u201cwe must do better to support our most vulnerable children and youth to ensure they are safe and can thrive.\u201d It was unclear whether the state would continue its oversight past June, when it expected to be finished.<\/p>\n

The NAACP\u2019s new complaint includes not only Jaxon\u2019s death, but the previously unreported deaths in 2022<\/a> of three children that had been under the supervision of the child welfare agency, all outlined in a report made public in February by the county\u2019s Child Death Review Team led by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Michelle Jorden.<\/p>\n

The three deaths in the report involved a 17-year-old severely autistic boy who died of COVID while his mother ran an errand, a 16-year-old who died of a fentanyl overdose and a 9-year-old autistic boy who drowned. In each case, the Child Death Review Team found that despite numerous interactions with all the families, social workers closed referrals as unfounded, referred parents to voluntary services they never completed, and took no further action until after a child died. Parents were later charged with felony child endangerment in one of the cases, and in another, they ultimately lost custody of their surviving children.<\/p>\n

Despite the Board of Supervisors\u2019 limited authority to fire anyone but the county executive, the NAACP said \u201cthe Board\u2019s failure to hold county executives accountable is not merely a governance lapse. It is a structural condition that has enabled every subsequent failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supervisor Sylvia Arenas, who spent her early career in child welfare and has been highly critical of the child welfare agency<\/a> since baby Phoenix\u2019s death, led calls for reforms and has closely monitored the changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an absolute tragedy, and one that could have been avoided if the county department leadership was not still keeping children in danger for the sake of \u2018preserving families,’\u201d Arenas said in a statement late Monday. She said she had met with District Attorney Rosen, County Executive Williams and the state Social Services Agency and \u201csecured their commitments to get to the bottom of this and create the real accountability our kids need and our community demands.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NAACP is demanding criminal investigations and the ouster of top county leaders over the death in foster…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[184,7,733,71242,138,2333,27362,1533,181,23,100,182,385,88,90,89,198,94685,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-279577","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-child-abuse","11":"tag-child-molestation","12":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","13":"tag-editors-picks","14":"tag-foster-care","15":"tag-keywee","16":"tag-latest-headlines","17":"tag-local-news","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-pm-report","20":"tag-regional","21":"tag-san-jose","22":"tag-san-jose-headlines","23":"tag-san-jose-news","24":"tag-santa-clara-county","25":"tag-social-alert","26":"tag-south-bay"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}