After finding three toddlers roaming a Florida street alone, a sheriff’s deputy discovered a dead baby in a plastic storage bin in their bedroom. Making matters worse, the infant’s foster mom was having the time of her life as the baby died.
Ricky Tubbs seemingly had better things to do than tend to the children who were placed in her care. After the Department of Children and Families (DCF) placed an infant and another child in foster care with Tubbs and her boyfriend, the 25-year-old Florida foster mother decided she needed a night out on the town. So, she headed out, leaving her boyfriend in charge of the children at their Cape Canaveral home.
Tubbs was supposed to return home before her boyfriend left for work the following morning, but after a night of drinking and drug use, she didn’t make it back in time, Daily Mail reported. Her boyfriend — the only other adult authorized to care for the children — was forced to leave the kids with 41-year-old Tanya Galvin, who lived with the couple. First, he contacted Tubbs, telling her to return home immediately so that the children wouldn’t be in Galvin’s care for long.
Sometime that day, while the boyfriend was at work and Tubbs’ location was unknown, a deputy with the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office found three toddlers, between the ages of 2 and 4, walking alone on Caroline Street in Cape Canaveral. After finding out where the children lived, deputies responded to the home to find the front door open and Galvin asleep. According to the sheriff’s office, Galvin admitted that she didn’t know where the children were and had assumed they were with Tubbs.
Meanwhile, deputies realized the 2-year-old was “wet and smelled of urine.” With Galvin’s permission, Deputy Kimberly Reites went into the children’s bedroom to get diapers and clean clothing for the child. While searching for those items, the deputy looked inside a plastic storage container and found a naked, unresponsive infant, later identified as 6-month-old Scorpio Sharp — Tubbs’ 6-month-old foster child.
Deputies immediately began CPR, during which “water was purged from the child’s mouth and nose,” a news release said, according to Fox 6 News. “The infant was transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced deceased,” the statement added. The baby boy’s body was taken to the Brevard County Medical Examiner’s Office, where an autopsy determined that he died as a result of drowning.
During a search of the home, officers found a bathtub with standing water 25 feet from where the baby’s body was discovered. The clothing he was last seen wearing was next to the tub, soaked in water, CBS 12 reported. Investigators determined that the infant drowned in the bathtub while in Galvin’s care and his body was later placed in the plastic bin.
“The investigation concluded that while under the care of Ms. Galvin the infant came in contact with the water, which subsequently resulted in his death,” a statement from the sheriff’s office read. “The infant was then discarded in a plastic container in the children’s room,” the statement added. The other children in the home were determined to be unable to lift an item of the infant’s weight without great difficulty that would have caused visible injury to the boy, making Galvin the only one who could have placed the baby’s body in the bin.
However, Ricky Tubbs shares the blame for the child’s death. Tubbs knew that she and her boyfriend were the only two adults authorized under DCF to care for the children. Furthermore, the investigation determined that Tubbs had consumed alcohol and narcotics during the evening and did not return to the residence, in violation of the order of DCF, until after the infant had been discovered by deputies.
In addition, Tubbs lied to DCF about “the living arrangements at the apartment in order to gain custody of the victim, failed to properly provide medication to the infant as mandated by the agreement with DCF, and knowingly left the children in the care of Galvin, which led to the death of the infant,” according to police.
More than three months after Scorpio Sharp’s body was found, Tanya Galvin and Ricky Tubbs were arrested in connection with the baby’s drowning death. Galvin, who was already in the Brevard County Jail on unrelated counts of shoplifting and resisting arrest, was charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child and violation of probation. Ricky Tubbs was charged with neglect of a child with great bodily harm. Sadly, this wasn’t either woman’s first run-in with the law in Florida.
Arrest records indicate that Ricky Tubbs was previously arrested for aggravated battery on a pregnant woman. Tanya Galvin has an extensive record, stretching back nearly a decade and including charges of burglary with assault or battery, breach of peace, and retail theft. Yet, Tubbs was given custody of these children while Galvin resided in her home.
Although Tubbs lied about the living arrangements, home visits by DCF should have easily uncovered the truth before an innocent infant died. Even if Galvin wasn’t in the picture, Tubbs had a violent criminal history of her own. So, why was she entrusted as a foster mother, to begin with? It seems to me, Galvin and Tubbs aren’t the only two culpable in Scorpio Sharp’s death. DCF deserves to be questioned extensively as well. How many other innocent children have been housed with violent criminals in Florida under their watch?
