A five-year-old girl is dead, and the people responsible for keeping her safe are staying silent. Last Wednesday afternoon, a tragedy unfolded in a Queens home when 32-year-old Francis Cabello killed her daughter, Fabiana, by asphyxiation. After the act, Cabello called 911 and admitted to the dispatcher that she had killed her child.
The big question isn’t just about what happened in that house, but what the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) knew before the tragedy. There were massive red flags regarding the mother’s mental state, yet the system failed to step in. Now, instead of demanding answers, Governor Hochul seems content to let the agency avoid scrutiny.
Signs of a breakdown were everywhere
The New York Post reports that Cabello had a documented history of mental health struggles, including a stay in a psychiatric hospital for several months earlier this year. Her family and neighbors saw the decline in real-time. One neighbor, whose grandchildren used to play with the little girl, told the Post that the mother’s behavior changed abruptly. “She used to come around to take her daughter to school, and then, from one moment to another, she stopped coming out,” he said.
This neighbor also observed that the child was no longer attending school because the mother had stopped leaving the residence. Additionally, Cabello’s father was told by his daughter that she had stopped taking her prescribed psychiatric medication. Despite these clear indicators of instability, the child remained in the home. On October 16, Cabello appeared in Queens Criminal Court to face murder charges.
The agency’s silence is deafening
When you look at the data, this isn’t just an isolated incident. Research from Lives Cut Short, a project involving UNC Chapel Hill and the American Enterprise Institute, shows a disturbing pattern. Between 2022 and 2026, the project tracked over 5,000 child maltreatment deaths nationwide, and 830 of those involved a parent struggling with mental illness. In New York specifically, 151 such cases were identified.
We have to ask why ACS didn’t act. Did they receive reports about the mother’s medication non-compliance? Did they notice the child was missing school? An ACS spokesperson offered a canned response to these questions, stating, “Our top priority is the safety and well-being of New York City children.” That’s a great line for a press release, but it doesn’t explain why a child with visible warning signs was left in a deadly situation.
Accountability cannot be optional
We’re watching a pattern here where the state government protects its agencies rather than the citizens they are supposed to protect. It’s easy to talk about “safety and well-being” when you’re behind a podium, but it’s much harder to do the actual work of investigating your own departments when they fail. Hochul’s refusal to demand a transparent investigation into ACS’s role in this case is a betrayal of every parent in this city.
This is opinion and commentary from the RapForMayor team.
