THIS IS WHAT A BAD MOTHER LOOKS LIKE! HER 4 YEAR OLD WHO WEIGHED ONLY 15 POUNDS WAS FOUND DEAD & TIED TO A CRIB!

A painfully malnourished 4-year-old girl was found dead in a filthy Brooklyn apartment Thursday - and cops found evidence she had been bound to her bed.
Marchella Pierce weighed just 15 pounds and had bruises and marks on her ankles that suggested they might have been tied with twine, police sources said.

Yet the cause of her death was a mystery, and police were unsure if they were investigating a horrific case of child neglect or the tragic death of a sickly child who spent most of her life in the hospital.

Cops were questioning the girl's mother, Carlotta Pierce, 30, her father, Tyrone Pierce, 30, and her grandmother, Loretta Brett.

Police sources said narcotics were found in the Madison St. apartment, but charges had yet to be filed. The NYPD's top spokesman, Paul Browne, said investigators are awaiting results of an autopsy, scheduled for Friday.

"My wife is a wonderful mother. I've never seen her hurt her kids," said Tyrone Pierce, who is separated.

He said Marchella was born prematurely at barely more than a pound. Her lungs were underdeveloped and she was in hospitals from birth until this February.

Doctors gave her a tracheotomy, making a hole in her neck so she could breathe with a tube.

Her father said a plastic insert for the hole was too small, causing problems, and that Marchella only recently began eating solid food through her mouth.

Cops were troubled when they responded to a 911 call Thursday. The child was on the mother's bed and inside the messy room was a bed for Marchella. Two lengths of twine were attached to the rails at each end, cops said.

"There were marks on each of the child's ankles consistent with her being tied up with that twine," a police source said.

Tyrone Pierce said he knew nothing about his daughter being restrained.

"Maybe it was to hold the bed together," he said.

Police questioned why Carlotta Pierce - who calls herself "a proud parent" on MySpace - waited 90 minutes to call for help.

She told cops she checked on her daughter about 4 a.m., and she was fine, the sources said.

She said she found her daughter unresponsive at 6 a.m. and did not call 911 until 7:30 a.m. because she was performing CPR, cops said.

Carlotta's two sons, ages 6 and 9 months, are in ACS custody.

ACS has investigated the family twice, police sources said.

The first case involved allegations Pierce had marijuana in her system when Marchella was born.

In the other, ACS assigned the Child Development Support Corp. to aid the parents after a report they were overwhelmed. The agency didn't visit the family two to three times a week, as required, the city source said.

But CDSC's executive director, Marcia Rowe-Riddick, denied the allegations and said the organization's contract expired at the end of June.