BY MICHAEL AMON AND REID EPSTEIN
michael.amon@newsday.com reid.epstein@newsday.com

10:34 PM EST, February 24, 2008

Two days before a New Cassel mother was charged with murdering her three children, county social workers were called to the home to investigate a complaint that she had threatened to kill them, a Nassau County official said.

It was one of six visits that county Child Protective Services made to check on Leatrice Brewer's children over the last five years, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The complaint, which came from one of the children's two fathers, also alleged that she was using cocaine and marijuana in front of the children.

Results of Friday's visit and the other five are unclear but Brewer's family said the county didn't act fast enough to remove the kids from a troubled mom. Brewer's grandmother, Maebell Mickens, 63, of New Cassel, said, "We knew she slipped, and me and the father of the youngest kids were trying to get Social Services to get the kids. They just wouldn't take them away."

Nassau Department of Social Services, which includes Child Protective Services, declined to comment on the case, except to say the agency was working "very closely" with police.

"This is a devastating tragedy," the department said in a two-sentence statement. "We are working very closely with the Police Department in the [course] of their investigation."

Friends and family said Brewer, 27, a single mother who worked two jobs, seemed to be cracking under the strain of providing for her young family.

Neighbors on Prospect Avenue had seen her outside in her pajamas, pushing an empty stroller. Others remember unpredictable outbursts she would have during conversations. Cornisha Robinson, 28, a family friend, of Amityville, said Brewer "wasn't a normal person."

In 2003, not long after the birth of Brewer's first child, Jewell Ward, her family made its first call to Child Protective Services, the county official said. It resulted in a visit to the home but nothing was resolved, family members said.

"They came out, checked everybody and didn't find anything," said Debra Rogers, a cousin. "It's not like she didn't feed her kids or take care of them. You couldn't look at them and say they weren't cared for."

But in the last several months, family members and authorities said, the situation in the home was deteriorating. Innocent Demesyeux, the father of Brewer's two younger children, had gone to court seeking custody of them, and Nassau police said they responded to at least a dozen 911 calls to the home in the last year, though they did not provide the reason for the calls.

Rogers said Brewer was becoming increasingly "paranoid," worrying that "people were watching her and watching her kids."

"I think she did this because she didn't want them [Child Protective Services] to take them from her," Rogers said. "She wanted her kids."

Emerson Clarridge and staff writer Nia-Malika Henderson contributed to this story.

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