In the days since New Haven police arrested a man accused of brutally beating his 9-year-old stepdaughter, people have been looking for ways to help the girl.
The New Haven police department has come up with what they call an informal plan to accept donated items.
Anyone wishing to help can make a donation at the the front desk of police headquarters, located at 1 Union Avenue.
"We are grateful for the support pledged by so many of you to this brave child," Officer David Hartman, media liaison for the New Haven Police Department, said.
They ask that donations be new items only that are appropriate for a child. Should many similar items be donated, they will be made available to other children in need.
Neither monetary donations nor food will be accepted.
Police will get the donated items to the state Department of Children and Families.
Police charged the girl's stepfather, Craig Tracy Williams, after finding the girl in Edgewood Park over the weekend.
Her face was swollen and bruised. There was a cut on her forehead and scars at varying stages of healing, according to police.
Officers were looking for her after Williams reported her missing and she provided officers with disturbing accounts of abuse.
She told them that Williams beat her with a baseball bat, handcuffed to a radiator and inflicted several other forms of abuse since she was 3, police said.
According to police records, scars and bruises supported her accounts.
She told officers she ran away on Saturday after Williams gotten mad at her because she would not eat her food, police said.
She told them police was left over from her baby brothers and had been drooled on, so she did not want it.
After she tried to hide it under a dresser, Williams then hit her in the forehead with a baseball bat, struck her legs with a belt and punched her, the girl told police.
The girl, who is 4-feet-tall and weighs only 60 pound, told police she is fed one meal per day.
Police arrested Williams at a nearby gas station after tracking him down using his cell phone. They said he was ready to flee with his wife and four other children.
Williams has been charged with second-degree assault and risk of injury to a child, according to court records.
He is being held in jail in lieu of a $500,000 bail.
