For months, family members of a City Heights couple warned San Diego County social workers to remove a baby from her parents’ care, fearing the couple was unfit due to mental health issues. That’s just one of several revelations from baby Delilah Ucman’s child welfare services case file, which was obtained through a petition by NBC 7.

Delilah was pronounced dead on November 9, 2021. Medical records show the three-month-old weighed less than four pounds. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say a healthy child of her age should have weighed more than fourteen pounds.

Prosecutors say her parents, Elizabeth Ucman and Brandon Copeland, starved her to death and charged each with 1st-degree murder. Both have pleaded not guilty. The trial is scheduled to begin next May.

Ordinarily, juvenile records like Delilah’s case file never see the light of day. Initially, our team requested those documents from San Diego County Child Welfare Services, which just rebranded itself as the Child and Family Well-Being Department. However, that agency isn’t legally allowed to give out any information about cases involving children. The only exception to that rule involves petitioning the juvenile court system to release documents.

NBC 7 Investigates filed that petition in April of 2023. We attended a couple of court hearings where attorneys for Ucman tried to block our efforts, but ultimately the judge sided with our petition, granting us the records. The file details what social workers say happened, in their own words, every time they made a call or a visit tied to Delilah’s case. An expert we spoke with says the case file paints a picture of missed opportunities and what-ifs.

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