3-Year-Old Girl Fighting To Recover From Burns

A little girl is hospitalized in a coma with second degree burns to her head and face.

Her parents say she was in foster care when she came in contact with boiling water.

“Whoever did that to her is not human,” said Angela Hawkins, Dusty Dawn’s mother.

For the past three weeks Dusty Dawn has been hospitalized, fighting for her life.

Her parents Angela Hawkins and Jackie Hughes were at home when a DHS worker came to the house and told them their daughter had been in an accident.

“They just said she had drowned and got burnt, she had second degree burns on her face,” said Hawkins.

They rushed to the hospital to find her in a hospital bed.

“She has tubes down her throat too much pain, she couldn't breathe,” said Jackie Hughes, Dusty Dawn’s father.  

To help manage the pain, doctors placed the three-year-old in a medically induced coma.

“No girl should go through that, anybody's daughter,” said Hughes.

Angela says she immediately contacted the foster parent who claimed it was all a tragic accident.

“They said she had an accident in her pants and he was giving her a bath,” said Hughes.

Hughes says the foster mother told her a teenage boy was caring for Dusty Dawn when she slipped into a bathtub filled with hot water and fractured her neck.

“I told her why did she leave her unattended with a 15-year-old first of all because I thought that was the point of being in DHS is to be safe and not be left like that,” said Hawkins.  

They've spent the past two years fighting for their children. Two days prior to the accident Angela and Jackie went to DHS asking them to transfer the children into tribal custody but were denied.

“If they would have gave them back to us from DHS we  wouldn't be in here right now,” said Hawkins.

Investigators would not say if any arrests have been made.