To all who read this please feel free to leave me a comment or your thoughts about this my friend is the one who was suppose to adopt baby tori. she needs to get the word out about abuse to children...
Baby tori zyana how she died
Baby almost got out
By LORI PILGER /
Tori Stone died of brain injuries from being shaken last week. Her father is charged with abuse leading to her death. But it was a situation the child didn't need to be in, says Tiffany Baloch, a Texas woman who wanted to adopt Tori.
By LORI PILGER | Lincoln Journal Star
Tori Stone's story is the kind that breaks hearts.
The little girl nearly survived the chaos around her, nearly made it out.
But it wasn't meant to be.
Her short life were filled with court filings, birth parents and a would-be adoptive family.
The players in Baby Tori's life:
Her mother, Tory Stone, a 22-year-old who had lost custody of a son, now 7, and two girls, 2 and 4.
Her father, Peter Sinica Jr., a 31-year-old Lincoln man now charged with child abuse resulting in her death.
Tiffany and Tariq Baloch, an El Paso, Texas, couple with three kids of their own who wanted to adopt Tori.
Adams Hines Grayson, Tory Stone's boyfriend and Tiffany Baloch's cousin.
Tori Zyana Leigh Stone entered the world just after lunch on May 10, a perfect 7-pound, 9-ounce baby with dark hair on her sweet little head.
"When I first saw her, I was in love," said Tiffany Baloch, who flew to Lincoln on May 11 to meet the baby she hoped to adopt.
She looked at her little face, her little hands, her little toes. She couldn't have loved her more had she carried her for nine months.
She'd been waiting for Tori's arrival since April 16, when her cousin called to say his girlfriend was pregnant and thinking about adoption.
"It just fell in my lap and I looked at it as a blessing from God," Baloch said.
Three weeks later, she said, her family drove to Lincoln. They met Tory Stone, but had to go back to El Paso before the baby was born.
They'd barely gotten home when she got another call from Nebraska. With a new infant seat in hand, she flew back to Lincoln.
Tiffany Baloch said she gave the baby girl her name, Tori Zyana Leigh, Tori so she'd always would have something of her mother's.
But with no paperwork, and the lack of a completed home study in Texas, she learned she could not take Tori out of Nebraska.
"It was the hardest thing to leave her, oh my goodness," Baloch said during a telephone interview from El Paso last week. "I cried the whole way home. I couldn't believe I was going home empty-handed."
She wouldn't see Tori again.
"It's like you're in a roller coaster ride and you're going down, down, down," Baloch said after Tori died.
What the Baloches didn't know was that the baby likely would never have been theirs anyway. While they waited in Texas for word the birth parents had signed over their rights, things in Nebraska were changing rapidly.
They knew the baby's father had entered the picture soon after Tori was born, but, Tiffany Baloch said, they'd been reassured the adoption would still happen.
They did not know, however, that doctors in Lincoln were comparing the baby's DNA to Sinica's. Court documents filed later would show they found a 99.9999 percent match.
And they didn't know that when Tori was just 2 weeks old Stone and Sinica worked out an arrangement to share parenting. Sinica was to have her for four days, Stone three, then Sinica three, Stone four, and so on.
And they certainly didn't know that on June 13, according to statements Sinica made in court documents, Stone showed up with the baby and all her belongings "... and said to me, 'You can have her, I don't want her.'"
On June 20, Sinica filed a petition to establish paternity and get custody.
In the petition, Sinica said he had an apartment on West G Street, a $7-an-hour part-time job, and wanted to be Tori's dad.
He noted in the petition that Stone's other three children had been taken by the state.
According to police and court records, the state took the two daughters in December 2004 after police found a loaded assault rifle in a playpen and a backpack with 13 bags of marijuana in Stone's apartment. That same month, authorities took custody of Stone's son, who was living with his dad. The father later admitted in court he had hurt the boy.
In his petition, Sinica admitted to past law violations, including three DUIs, and said he'd lost his license for 15 years.
"I am a fit and proper person to have custody of my daughter and it would be in her best interest to be in my care, custody and control," he said in an affidavit to District Court Judge John A. Colborn.
He failed to mention a protection order filed against him July 28, 2005, by a woman who said he told her he'd enjoy cutting her and her boyfriend into pieces. She said she was scared for her life, but didn't show up at a hearing and a judge dismissed the order.
"... I want to parent my child," Sinica said in his request for custody. " I am capable of doing so."
All the while, the Baloch family waited. Two weeks turned into five. Finally, Baloch said, she heard from her cousin and Stone in mid-June. They assured her the baby was still hers, she said.
But on June 28, Sinica and Stone were in a Lincoln courtroom, where Judge Colborn formalized the shared custody agreement they'd worked out on their own.
Four days with Stone, three days with Sinica, three days with Stone, four days with Sinica ...
Soon after, Stone and her boyfriend moved to an apartment near Sinica's parents in Air Park. His parents would help him raise Tori, he'd told the judge. They were going to rename her Jaden.
Stone, Sinica and his parents did not respond to requests for interviews.
On July 27, Tiffany Baloch got word that things had gone horribly wrong. The baby girl she hoped to adopt was in an Omaha hospital on life support.
"Up until Thursday (the day Tori died) I thought I was still getting her," Baloch said.
Police believe Sinica had shaken his 11-week-old daughter, trying to keep her from disturbing his parents.
Doctors said she'd been shaken, causing blood from tiny torn vessels to push down on her brain. Scans showed three other brain injuries, one from at least two weeks earlier.
In an arrest warrant, police say Sinica told them he held the baby's mouth shut, then wiped her nose and laid her in his bed on her side in the early morning hours of July 27. When he tried to feed her, the warrant says, she was barely breathing.
"The defendant said that at that point he began violently shaking Tori," the affidavit for arrest said. "According to the defendant, he was attempting to revive Tori. ... The defendant indicate(d) that Tori's head, arms and legs flailed wildly each time that he shook her."
At 2:25 a.m., Sinica carried her into Fire Station No. 11 in Air Park. She was not breathing. Rescuers revived her and took her to BryanLGH West. She died that night at Children's Hospital in Omaha.
"The examinations conducted at Children's Hospital indicated (Tori) Stone sustained three separate subdural brain injuries," an affidavit for a warrant to search Sinica's parents' home at 4907 W. Kent St. said. "The injuries were believed to be caused by a catastrophic event and a great deal of force. Stone suffered rib fractures, knee fractures and broken vertebra."
Tori Stone was buried on Aug. 2 at Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln.
"It's heartbreaking that this had to occur like this, when it didn't," Baloch said. "She had a safe haven to come to."
Reach Lori Pilger at 473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com.
