Azaeliyah Pili-Ah also bore injuries consistent with strangulation, Honolulu officials said
The adopted mother of an 11-year-old Hawaii girl who died under mysterious circumstances is now being charged in connection with the young girl’s death.
Sina Pili, 39, is set to be arraigned this week after a grand jury indicted the social worker on charges of manslaughter, endangering the welfare of a minor and persistent nonsupport.
Azaeliyah Pili-Ah passed away on Dec. 22, 2023, just a few hours after officers arrived to Pili’s home and found the girl unresponsive and covered in bruises, according to Lt. Deena Thoemmes of the Honolulu Police Department.
The girl’s adopted father said her bruises were caused after she fell in the shower, Thoemmes said at a news conference on Friday.
The Honolulu Medical Examiner’s Office elected to defer releasing a cause and manner of death in the case pending further testing after their initial autopsy, but in June a forensic pathologist with the agency determined Azaeliyah’s cause of death to be “multiple injuries from child abuse” and the manner of death to be homicide, according to Thoemmes.
In addition to the “extensive bruising” seen by officers on the scene, the forensic pathologist also found that Azaeliyah had “abrasions” to various parts of her body, “wounds to the nose consistent with being bitten” and “internal injuries to the inside of the neck likely from strangulation,” Thoemmes said.
The young girl also tested positive for COVID-19, influenza, and pneumonia.
On the day of her death, Pili allegedly forced Azaeliyah to run outside despite being sick and then “slapped and punched Azaeliyah multiple times over a 30-minute period,” Thoemmes said.
Azaeliyah’s four siblings, who had also been adopted by Pili, were taken into protective custody while their sister’s death was being investigated, Thoemmes said, but their mother continued to work at Kahuku High and Intermediate School where she was employed as a behavioral health specialist and served as an adviser to the senior class, per online records.
She has since been put on leave pending an investigation, a spokesperson for the Hawaii Department of Education confirmed to PEOPLE.
Pili also served as an adjunct professor in the social work department at Brigham Young University–Hawaii but was terminated after the school learned of her arrest, a spokesperson tells PEOPLE.
Thoemmes said that Pili will be arraigned on Thursday and noted that police are still investigating the girl’s adopted father.
Pili is currently being held without bail at the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Kailua. Court records indicate she has not yet retained an attorney.
