Complete Coverage Of Zahra Case

State law says that any time Social Services is involved with a family and that child dies within one year, there's an intensive review to see if the death could have been prevented. The investigation will begin locally with all the key players, including Zahra's schools, DSS offices, emergency responders and the district attorney. Their findings will then be passed on to a state review team.

Brett Loftis, executive director of the Council for Children's Rights, is part of the state review team. He said the process will likely center around how DSS handled the multiple reports of abuse before Zahra's death.

"This tragic case really highlights one of the big policy issues we focus on, which is the fact that each Department of Social Service has its own database, their own kind of electronic system, and they don't speak to each other," Loftis said.

Channel 9 also learned that DSS policy could be called into question because workers currently can't be influenced by prior reports or investigations when checking on reports of abuse or neglect.

“That's disturbing for me, personally, and for our agency because we're concerned that we may have more children like Zahra Baker and other children where we have situations where we ignored those red flags,” attorney and child advocate Valerie Pearce said.

It could take about a year for both local and state teams to review the factors leading up to Zahra's death and, at that point, they will make any recommendations to state legislators.

For information about the North Carolina Child Fatality Prevention program, click here.

For information about the North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force, click here. To see samples of the task force’s accomplishments and read the general statute that created it, click here.