Tina Farrington: Mom Charged With Smothering 4-Year-Old, Dumping In Trash, Accused Child’s Cop Dad Of Abuse

Tina Farrington, a 31-year-old mom of two in Florida’s Miami-Dade metro area, faces charges this week that she murdered her own 4-year-old daughter on Halloween night, then waited several days before dumping the little girl’s lifeless body in a trash dumpster. Farrington was arrested on Monday, according to a report by WPLG in Miami, after a resident at the apartment complex where Farrington lived in Homestead, Florida, discovered the child’s body wrapped in a blanket while taking out garbage.

But just four months earlier, Farrington had accused the girl’s father, Leon Paige — a Miami police officer — of violent child abuse. The couple was neither married nor living in the same home. Farrington filed for a restraining order against Paige in June, according to a Miami Herald report.

Both Farrington and Paige appeared in a Miami courtroom on Tuesday, as the dad — with a group of his fellow Miami police officers in the courtroom to support him — petitioned a judge for custody of his toddler son, according to a WSVN report. But due to the pending domestic violence case brought by Farrington against the father of her children, a judge awarded temporary custody of the boy to his grandmother, Farrington’s mother.

Police: 31yo Tina Farrington confessed to murdering her daughter, 4yo Tania Paige. She was found in a trash bin by their neighbor over the weekend in SW Miami Dade. Her father is a @MiamiBeachPD officer. @wsvn pic.twitter.com/1GNbwq5Vrr

— Ann Keil (@ann_keil) November 6, 2017

Police now say that Farrington has made a full confession to the murder of her daughter, Tania Paige. According to the police account, as reported by Florida’s Sun-Sentinel, at about 7 p.m on the evening of October 31, after becoming upset with the 4-year-old’s “sassy” behavior and back-talking, Farrington “lured” both children into her bedroom.

There, she reportedly smothered the little girl with a pillow — though police have not yet said whether they believe the 2-year-old boy witnessed his mother murder his sister. But Farrington then stashed the girl’s corpse in the trunk of her personal automobile, a 2013 Nissan Sentra, according to reports. Days later, when the odor of the decomposing body became intolerable, she disposed of her dead daughter in a dumpster at the apartment complex where she resided, police say.

According to neighbors quoted by WPLG, as police officers arrested Farrington at her home, she was heard loudly demanding that they leave her apartment.

“Her face was just, like, no remorse, no worries,” one neighbor who witnessed the arrest told the TV station.

But Farrington had successfully obtained a no-contact order against the children’s father on August 9 after the mom now accused of murdering her own child reported that Paige had beaten the little boy on the head with a belt to the point where “knots” were seen on the child’s head when Paige dropped the boy off at a daycare facility, according to a Miami Herald report.

Despite the decomposed state of the little girl’s body when it was discovered, police said the body showed evidence of bruises on the legs, arms, and torso. Paige has never been arrested or charged in connection with the alleged abuse, however.

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