2 years after 5-year-old girl’s death, family prepares for trial

Janiyah Russell would have started third grade in the fall.

She would have celebrated her 8th birthday next month with her grandmother, mother and four siblings, potentially riding a new bicycle.

Instead, Janiyah’s family plans to travel to Las Vegas from out of state next week to watch her father’s girlfriend face a murder trial in the girl’s killing.

Richard Davis, 27, and his girlfriend, Shevhaun Miller, 26, were arrested after police said their story on what happened to the girl kept changing, according to their arrest report.

The couple called police at 8 a.m. Sept. 11, 2019, to report that 5-year-old Janiyah was cold and unresponsive.

Davis said he wasn’t home when Miller put Janiyah in the bathtub about three hours earlier that morning and went outside to smoke a cigarette. After Miller walked back inside, the child was “stomach down” in the bathtub, according to the police report.

Miller told police she dressed Janiyah, laid her on the couch and went back to bed for two hours after blowing in the child’s mouth “because she looked like she needed some air” and later turning up the heat because the child looked cold.

She was 88 degrees when she arrived at Sunrise Children’s Hospital that morning, the report stated.

Davis later told police he had spanked Janiyah with a belt about 20 times around Sept. 9, according to the arrest report, and the autopsy included in the report showed the girl had “significant internal hemorrhaging and injuries.”

Miller’s trial is scheduled to start Monday, while court records show that Davis’ trial is set for February.

Attorneys for Davis and Miller could not be reached for comment.

Janiyah’s maternal grandmother, Tirzah Russell, said the girl loved watching “Paw Patrol” and was learning her letters, numbers and colors to start kindergarten before she died.

“She was really protective over her brother and her sister,” Tirzah Russell said. “She was a good big sister, she was very helpful, always wanting to help.”

Janiyah never got to meet her mother’s two youngest children, who were born after she died.

Russell said Davis did not speak to the child until 2018, when just after her 4th birthday he took her to live with him and cut off almost all contact with her mother’s family.

Russell said that the next time she saw her oldest grandchild, she was in a casket.

“She didn’t even look the same in her casket,” Russell said. “She looked like somebody I didn’t even recognize. I asked who is this child? My grandbaby, I know would have gotten older, but most of her facial features would have not changed that much.”

Russell said she was overjoyed when she learned Davis was arrested because she suspected he had done something to hurt Janiyah.

“We are a praying family and we knew that he was going to, somehow or another, end up in jail,” she said.

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.