CHARLOTTE AMALIE, US Virgin Islands (AP) — St Thomas police arrested a woman — whose boyfriend allegedly beat her three-year-old daughter to death earlier this month — and charged her with child abuse and neglect.

Sylvia Byrd, 34, of Charlotte Amalie, is accused of knowing that her boyfriend, Derick Hoheb, regularly beat Byrd’s two daughters, three-year-old Melea Pownell and her eight-year-old sister.

Pownell died on May 10 from blows to her head and body, according to autopsy reports.

Hoheb has been charged with first-degree murder and 19 other charges in connection with the death and what police say was the repeated beating, burning and choking of the two girls.

The St Thomas man pleaded innocent on Thursday to the charges.

Byrd’s bail was set at $75,000, but she remained in custody and is scheduled to appear in court today.

The charges against Hoheb state that at various times between November and May, he punched the younger girl in the mouth, choked her and on one occasion put a hot cloth on the girl’s bottom, burning her so badly that skin came off on the cloth, according to court papers.

The older daughter told one of her school teachers in late April that Hoheb had grabbed her by the hair and pounded her head on the floor, according to an affidavit signed by officer Roselyn Bedminster.

The girl also told her teacher that Hoheb sometimes choked her so hard that her eyes bulged out and it felt like she was going to die, Bedminster said.

The teacher spoke to Byrd two days later about what the girl had said, but Byrd told the teacher that her daughter was “blowing things out of proportion”, Bedminster said.

Social workers removed the eight-year-old from the home and put her into foster care on May 2, but they were still investigating whether Pownell might be in danger at the time of her death.

After Pownell’s death, Byrd told investigators that the girl suffered from sickle-cell anemia, and that any marks on her body were caused by the girl scratching her irritated skin.

Police say that Byrd denied Pownell medical care after some of the assaults, afraid nurses would ask how the marks occurred.

If convicted of child abuse, Byrd could be sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Hoheb faces a maximum sentence of life in prison on the murder charge.