{"id":484111,"date":"2026-10-03T18:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T18:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/484111\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T18:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T18:04:14","slug":"aurora-williams-asthma-death-mother-disputes-homicide-finding-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/484111\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Williams\u2019 asthma death: Mother disputes homicide finding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gabrielle Hanson was in bed with her 2-month-old baby when her husband rushed in with Aurora\u2019s limp body<\/a> in his arms. Her 8-year-old daughter who had been suffering an asthma attack that May 13 morning had stopped breathing.<\/p>\n

\u201cCall 911!\u201d Aurora\u2019s stepfather, Jacob Randolph, said.<\/p>\n

Hanson was so panicked, she said, she could barely follow the dispatcher\u2019s instructions for CPR. Nonetheless, Randolph pushed on Aurora\u2019s chest while Hanson tried desperately to breathe back life through her child\u2019s mouth.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t seem to help.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time they got here,\u201d Hanson told the Bay Area News Group, \u201cshe was gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aurora was kept on life support until doctors declared her dead days later.<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, nearly five months later, the tragedy has become far more than one family\u2019s loss<\/a> of a sick child. The county medical examiner classified her death as a homicide, finding that a failure to provide necessary medical care on the day she became unresponsive was a significant factor. The District Attorney is evaluating whether to file charges.<\/p>\n

The county\u2019s Department of Family and Children\u2019s Services is left trying to explain how a seventh child involved with its social workers has died since 2022, despite teachers and medical providers making eight separate referrals to the county\u2019s child abuse hotline with concerns about Aurora\u2019s welfare, that she appeared neglected, malnourished and unkempt. And the superintendent of the Mount Pleasant Elementary School District where Aurora was a second grader is demanding what the superintendent called a \u201ccomplete overhaul\u201d of the child welfare agency. The agency did not remove children from the home, which social workers had described as filthy and vermin-infested, until after Aurora died.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur staff did everything within their power to sound the alarm,\u201d Mount Pleasant\u2019s Superintendent Elida MacArthur said. \u201cThis cannot be allowed to happen again. Aurora\u2019s memory demands accountability, transparency, and meaningful change.\u201d<\/p>\n

County spokesperson Peter Gallotta said in a statement that \u201cour hearts go out to all those who loved Aurora.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe death of any child in our community is a tragedy,\u201d Gallotta said, \u201cand we will continue working together across the community to ensure families have the support they need for children to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her first interview since her daughter\u2019s death, however, Aurora\u2019s 32-year-old mother stood on the front stoop of her East San Jose home and said the death was a tragic medical emergency. Nothing more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think anybody\u2019s at fault for this. I think it was just a tragedy that could have happened anywhere,\u201d Hanson said. \u201cIt could have happened at school. It just happened to happen at home. And I don\u2019t blame CPS. I don\u2019t blame myself. I don\u2019t blame anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t understand how Aurora\u2019s death could be considered a homicide.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had known she was that bad, of course I would have taken her to the hospital that night,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I had no idea because I\u2019ve heard her worse before.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a brief interview earlier Thursday with the Mercury News, her husband said he gave Aurora two medications for her asthma that morning and they \u201cweren\u2019t working.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Aurora lay unconscious in a hospital bed that week in mid-May, the same child welfare agency that had determined that eight separate concerns over Aurora\u2019s welfare since 2023 were unfounded or inconclusive removed Hanson\u2019s four other children and two step-children from the home and placed them in foster care. Police officers with a search warrant described the house on Lancelot Lane much as social workers had described it before \u2014 squalid, with open trash, an overwhelming smell of pet urine and cockroaches climbing on the walls.<\/p>\n

Social workers filed a petition with the county\u2019s dependency court to remove Aurora from her mother\u2019s care, according to a county summary of the steps social workers took in Aurora\u2019s case \u2014 documents obtained through a Public Records Act request by this news organization.<\/p>\n

At a May 18 hearing before a dependency judge, Aurora\u2019s mother and Richard Williams, her ex and Aurora\u2019s father, appeared in the courtroom with lawyers representing them as well as Aurora. By then, however, their child was already dead.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Court was advised on the record that the child had died the day before the hearing,\u201d the summary said.<\/p>\n

The case has sparked outrage among county supervisors who have been overseeing two years of\u00a0reforms at the agency. Wendy Kinnear-Rausch, the director of the Department of Family and Children\u2019s Services, told supervisors last month she would give her agency \u201ca failing grade\u201d over recent events, and County Executive James Williams characterized the agency\u2019s response as \u201cactually 40 points below an F.\u201d<\/p>\n

The California Department of Social Services mandated reforms after the 2023 fentanyl overdose death of infant Phoenix Castro, who was sent home with her drug-abusing father despite a social worker\u2019s warning she would be unsafe there. Seven-year-old Jordan Walker, who was placed by social workers in the home of his grandmother despite pleas from his out-of-state grandfather, was stabbed to death allegedly by an uncle a few months later. Jaxon Juarez, 2, died in April after he was placed by social workers in a relative\u2019s home, where his teenage cousin is now accused of sexually assaulting him. And earlier this year, Medical Examiner Dr. Michelle Jorden issued a Child Death Review Team report<\/a> showing that three children who had been involved with social workers died in 2022, and warned that neglect is often minimized within the child welfare system by social workers concerned about conflating it with poverty.<\/p>\n

\"AA selfie taken by Aurora Williams with her mom, Gabrielle Hanson, last year. Aurora’s death in May after an asthma attack in her cockroach-infested East San Jose home has spurred more demands for an overhaul of Santa Clara County’s child welfare agency.(Photo courtesy of Gabrielle Hanson)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under her porch light Thursday evening, Hanson scrolled through pages of photos she took of Aurora over the years \u2014 trips to Happy Hollow and Disneyland, blowing kisses on her birthday, wearing a princess dress.<\/p>\n

Aurora wanted to be a doctor or a teacher one day, \u201cor both.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was an angel on this earth,\u201d Hanson said, choking up. \u201cShe loved me more than anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Life was a struggle, she said, but \u201cwe tried our best\u201d \u2014 a similar assessment made by social workers who visited the home over the past several years, according to county documents.<\/p>\n

Hanson stayed home with the seven children while her husband worked as a security guard. They each brought two children into their relationship. Over the past six years together, they had three children together.<\/p>\n

A total of 13 people, at least three dogs and five cats lived in her father\u2019s small house, including Hanson\u2019s three grown brothers, one of whom slept in a trailer in the front yard. Three of the children, including Aurora, slept in a pair of bunk beds and a trundle in the living room. A fourth bedded down \u201cwherever he kind of fell asleep,\u201d she said. The two youngest slept with her.<\/p>\n

Some days they wouldn\u2019t get their children to school on time. Others, Aurora faked she was sick, she said.<\/p>\n

Pet hair and dander covered the furniture, social workers noted in reports obtained by this news organization. Flies swarmed the house. Cockroaches crawled in and out of kitchen cabinets and dishes piled up in fetid water.<\/p>\n

With a new baby, she said, \u201cI had a lot to handle.\u201d Because the house belonged to her dad, she had little control of the household: \u201cI\u2019m the only adult female living here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hanson said \u201cof course\u201d she knew that cockroaches and a dirty house could aggravate her daughter\u2019s asthma, which had been diagnosed when Aurora was a toddler.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I didn\u2019t have the money to get us out of here,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t. I still don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides, she said, \u201cif the house is to blame, then why don\u2019t my other kids have any problems like that?\u201d<\/p>\n

If social workers were really concerned about her children, she said, they would have provided money for a pest service, not just $100 worth of pest foggers and roach traps that she said didn\u2019t work. Instead, \u201cthey dismissed everything,\u201d she said, from the living conditions to the accusations of neglect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t help us very much,\u201d she said. \u201cI know they\u2019re claiming that they did, but they really didn\u2019t, and now they\u2019re giving all kinds of money to these foster parents to take care of our kids when they could have helped us first before this happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

She took issue with reports that Aurora was malnourished and that she didn\u2019t follow up with doctor\u2019s visits. Aurora was a small child, like Hanson was as a girl, she said, and \u201cI cook for my kids all the time, and if I ever could not afford to get them food, my dad made sure that they didn\u2019t go without.\u201d<\/p>\n

School officials had told social workers that Aurora told them she was hungry and that she hoarded snacks into her pockets and backpack. Hanson said her children would sometimes skip breakfast \u2018because they weren\u2019t hungry,\u201d and would naturally be hungry later. Besides, she said, \u201ckids love snacks. They\u2019re going to load up on anything they can.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AuroraAurora Williams, 8, at her school last Christmas. (Photo courtesy of Gabrielle Hanson)\u00a0<\/p>\n

She also knows of no follow up doctor\u2019s visits that she missed.<\/p>\n

Aurora\u2019s asthma attack started the night before, Hanson said. Her husband stayed up late while she went to bed with her newborn. She checked on Aurora the next morning \u2014 the timing was unclear \u2014 and reminded her to keep the nebulizer on her face, then went back to bed.<\/p>\n

Tears ran down Hanson\u2019s face as she recalled Aurora\u2019s death and the removal of the other six children from her care. Three of them are in foster homes in the Central Valley. She is allowed weekly visits at the agency in San Jose with each of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cLosing a child and then losing my other ones to CPS are both of my worst fears come to light,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

At Mount Pleasant school district, staff there are also feeling the pain, Superintendent Elida MacArthur said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAurora\u2019s death is an unimaginable tragedy that has shaken our entire community and will leave wounds that will take years to heal,\u201d MacArthur said in her statement. \u201cAurora deserved better. Every child deserves better.\u201d<\/p>\n

MacArthur called for a \u201cfull and independent examination of what happened, how the system failed Aurora, and why the concerns raised on her behalf did not lead to the intervention she needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Aurora\u2019s death, Hanson\u2019s father, Clay Hanson, hired a pest control company, scoured the house and repainted the walls.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad\u2019s been doing a lot of work on the house, I think partially because he felt so bad,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She wishes he would have done so before. \u201cI was pretty upset about that. Why wait? Why did you wait until something horrible happened?\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, she said, \u201cI don\u2019t blame anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hanson wants to find a new home for her family, but with a homicide finding from the Medical Examiner looming over her, she fears what lies ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved her so much, and the thought that I might go to jail now for something that I had no control over \u2014 she wouldn\u2019t want that, you know?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like they\u2019re looking for somebody to blame,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I did everything I could. We all did.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gabrielle Hanson was in bed with her 2-month-old baby when her husband rushed in with Aurora\u2019s limp body…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[189426,180849,146878,189425,162583,88,90,89,198],"class_list":["post-484111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-asthma-death","tag-aurora-williams","tag-child-welfare","tag-gabrielle-hanson","tag-medical-neglect","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-santa-clara-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484111","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=484111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}