Wichita foster mom sentenced for burning 2-year-old over potty training accident
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- Wichita woman sentenced to 61 months for abusing 2-year-old foster daughter.
- Police say child sustained burns after being forced into scalding bathwater.
- State revoked day care license week after abuse; emergency order was issued.
A Wichita foster mother and day care provider is going to prison for beating and burning her 2-year-old daughter over a potty training accident.
Ija M. Hall, 30, was sentenced to 61 months in prison Friday after a Sedgwick County judge denied her request for probation, court records show. She pleaded guilty to two counts of child abuse in July.
Police have said that on Sept. 5, 2024, Hall forced the toddler to sit in bathwater that was so hot it caused second-degree burns and some of the girl’s skin to slough off. Initially, Hall lied to hospital staff and authorities about how the girl was burned, claiming at first that the girl sat in a firepit while kids were making s’mores during a friend’s anniversary barbecue party.
Hall later changed her story, telling police that the girl had climbed into the hot bath herself and got burned by accident, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Eventually, Hall admitted to police that she had hit the toddler and forced her into the hot bathwater because she was angry that the girl had had a potty training accident and urinated on the kitchen floor. When the girl got up from the scalding water, Hall pushed her back down, according to the affidavit.
She didn’t let her out of the tub until she noticed skin on the 2-year-old’s ankles peeling away.
Hall told police she had never “felt so, so upset in my life” and that she wanted to call the girl’s case worker to “come get her because I was so angry,” the affidavit says.
Hall tried to treat the burns with a drugstore first aid kit but ended up taking the girl to the hospital when she “realized how bad the injuries were,” according to the affidavit.
When authorities checked the temperature of the bathwater left in the tub, it was 118 degrees. The water was 126 degrees directly out of the faucet, according to the affidavit.
In addition to being charged with child abuse, Hall also lost her day care license. She had operated His Loving hands Home Childcare, 357 N. Erie, but the Kansas Department of Health and Environment issued an emergency suspension order a week after Hall hurt her foster daughter.
