Fearing that Sabrina Darien's severely disabled son was ''wasting away,'' child welfare investigators removed the 8-year-old from his home on Sept. 3 and took him to a hospital, and then to a foster home.

The Department of Children & Families left three other children with Darien, who only weeks earlier had left Ohio amid another child-neglect investigation. ''The other children,'' DCF records say, ``appeared to be fine.''

But not for long.

On Thursday, Miami-Dade police charged Watson J. Dorval, 24, Darien's boyfriend, with second-degree murder in the death of 6-month-old Jahairee Darien. Police say the baby boy was beaten to death.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge George Sarduy on Friday ordered Darien's two remaining children -- a boy who spent his third birthday Friday at Jackson Memorial Hospital recovering from malnutrition and the beating he received along with Jahairee, and a 9-year-old boy -- placed in state care.

The Miami Herald is not naming the children to protect their privacy.

Friday, as Darien sobbed at Miami's juvenile courthouse, her attorney, Carol Gillespie, insisted the two children would be safe with their mother. ''There is nothing to indicate she poses any type of threat,'' Gillespie said.

GOAL OF PROTECTION

''I feel horrible for you, mom,'' the judge said to Darien. But, he added, ''I believe there is sufficient cause'' to take the children into custody. ``Remember, our goal is to protect these children.''

On Aug. 25, DCF's abuse hot line received a report that Darien's 8-year-old son, who is diagnosed with cerebral palsy, is confined to a wheelchair and cannot speak, was being neglected. An investigator went to Darien's home and evaluated the four children: ``All the children sleep on a queen-size bed . . . the children's room smelled of urine.''

The 8-year-old weighed only 31 pounds and had lost seven since his last doctor's appointment, the investigator wrote. Though his mother had been told to feed him a nutritional supplement through his plastic feeding tube, there was no supplement in the house. A DCF report said the boy's muscles were ``wasting away.''

NEGLECT ALLEGATIONS

Child welfare authorities with Ohio's Hamilton County Family Services told DCF they had been investigating allegations of medical neglect involving Darien when she abruptly left the state for Florida. It had been the fourth child welfare investigation of the family in Ohio, though none of the allegations had been verified, DCF records show.

Flora Beal, a DCF spokeswoman, said investigators were so concerned about the disabled boy's welfare that they took him from Darien's home days after learning of the Ohio investigation. The other children appeared to be well-fed and in good physical health.

''The three children in her home, in our view, were not in any danger,'' said Esther Jacobo, DCF's regional legal director. ``Mom was taking care of them.''

`ABOVE AND BEYOND'

''We went above and beyond. All the right decisions were made,'' Beal said. ``We couldn't do anything to avoid this.''

A caseworker with the Center for Family & Child Enrichment, a private foster-care agency under contract with DCF, began visiting the disabled child after DCF removed him from his home, program administrator Angela Smith-Mahy told Sarduy on Friday. But she added that the agency was not given any authority to provide services to the other three children living with Darien.

A HOME STUDY

The agency had performed a home study on Darien and had learned that Dorval was Darien's boyfriend and a ''frequent visitor'' to the home, but he declined to be fingerprinted for a criminal background check.

A check would have revealed that Dorval had been arrested six times since 2003 on charges ranging from grand theft and assault to drug possession, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement records. He pleaded guilty in January to cocaine and marijuana charges.

Beal said DCF did not know until after Jahairee's death that Dorval was spending a great deal of time in the home.

Police say Darien left the children with Dorval on Tuesday.

''While she was away,'' a sworn statement says, Dorval ``struck the victim multiple times.''

In court Friday, DCF attorney Deana Holiday said that after Jahairee's death, his 2-year-old sibling had been found ''alone in a bedroom covered in feces and malnourished.'' Investigators also found drugs and drug paraphernalia within the reach of the children, Holiday said.

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