The Bahamian has also been accused of raping the 8-year-old girl and leaving her for dead in an abandoned landfill.
The young man, 18-year-old Milagro Cunningham, was declared mentally incompetent and unfit to stand trial, in a case that has grabbed headlines all across the southern state.
According to Florida press, Palm Beach Circuit Court Judge Edward Garrison ordered Cunningham ﾖ who seems to have been in the US illegally ﾖ committed to a treatment facility, and required that the Department of Children and Families report on the boyﾒs condition within six months.
Cunninghamﾒs public defender reportedly argued last year that he comprehended and communicated within the range of a seven to 9-year-old child.
Police reportedly discovered the girl under chunks of concrete at a landfill last May, about seven hours after she was reported missing from her grandmotherﾒs home.
The child identified Cunningham as the attacker.
Authorities reportedly said Cunningham confessed after initially telling police that five men in a station wagon took the girl.
Two of the three mental health experts who examined Cunningham concluded he was incompetent, according to Florida press.
Cunningham faced other counts not specified in press reports, but it appears he had had run-ins with Florida law enforcement before.
Officials said he was arrested three times for burglary, but failed to attract the attention of immigration authorities because his cases were handled in the juvenile justice system.
Cunningham seems to have been shipped off to Florida by a frustrated mother, and banished from the home of a fed-up aunt. He was apparently taken in by a sympathetic neighbour, Lisa Taylor.
Taylor told the Palm Beach Post that Cunningham was “basically just floating. I couldnﾒt put him in school. He couldnﾒt get a job.”
The Post reported that Cunninghamﾒs three burglary arrests happened within a one-month stretch.
Art Bullock, U.S. Border Patrol chief in West Palm Beach, told the press that if Cunningham had been booked into the main jail, he would have been checked.
Cunningham arrived in 2003 on a visitorﾒs visa from the Bahamas and overstayed the short-term limit, said immigration spokesman Manny Van Pelt.
By: Quincy Parker, The Bahama Journal
