MANCHESTER – Two days before a 4-year-old was fatally struck in the pre-dawn darkness on East Center Street, the girl was seen running in the same street at 5:15 a.m., according to a warrant for her parents’ arrests.

Police were called twice in June to reports of Akari Cortes being in the road, unsupervised, prior to her June 10 death, the warrant said. She also had marijuana in her blood at the time she was killed, it said.

Her mother, Taylor Biron, 28, and father, Nathael Cortes, 26, were charged last week with risk of injury to a child. Cortes is a felon with gun and assault convictions, state records show, but police did not mention his record in the warrant.

The driver of the car that hit the little girl also was arrested. Although police said they don’t believe Tarequl Ambia, 49, was under the influence at the time, he was distracted by his cellphone and was speeding when he struck the girl, according to the warrant for his arrest; he is charged with misconduct with a motor vehicle and four traffic offenses.

The warrant for Biron and Cortes paints a picture of parents dealing with a challenging child – in addition to a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old: They put a chain lock on their main door to keep Akari inside, but she was able to fit through the opening, it said; they installed a deadbolt, but may have left the key in it.

The entire family of five even started sleeping downstairs to make sure they would be aware if Akari, who her father said was diagnosed with autism, tried to leave, the warrant said.

4-year-old riding a bike, nude

According to the warrant, a woman approached an officer around 10:50 a.m. June 1 and said a child was riding a small bike in the middle of Bissell Street, near the family’s home, naked. When the officer arrived, the girl ran toward her house, where the main door was ajar and Cortes was inside sleeping, it said. When he woke up, he said he didn’t know Akari was home.

Biron usually puts her on the bus at 7:30 a.m. and goes to work, he told the officer; Biron later explained that she didn’t send her daughter to school that day because the girl was up late the night before, according to the warrant. She acknowledged there had been a miscommunication, it said.

Cortes told police they had a child lock on the door, but their daughter was able to defeat it. Officers suggested the parents install a latch out of the girl’s reach or a door alarm, and contacted the state Department of Children and Families.

The parents tried to do both things: They put a chain-style latch on the door and ordered door alarms.

But at 5:15 a.m. on June 8, it happened again. This time, a caller told police a girl was “running in the middle of East Center Street,” the warrant said. When an officer arrived, Akari was playing in a sprinkler, it said.

She was sent to the hospital to be checked, and shortly after she left, Cortes called 911 to report the girl missing, the warrant said; officers went to his home and he told them they had installed the chain-style latch on the door, but it still opened enough for the girl to get outside.

And the company from which the parents ordered a door alarm on June 2 notified the parents the order was delayed and later canceled it, the DCF investigator told police, according to the warrant.

The DCF investigator, Aracellie Delgado, advised the parents to buy another type of lock or security device immediately, and the parents bought a deadbolt the same day, the warrant said; they later sent a video to the investigator showing the child touching it but being unable to unlock it. The deadbolt required a key to lock or unlock from either side, it said.

The parents also ordered more door alarms, the warrant said.

Slipped out again

Still, Akari managed to get out of the house again, and at 4:30 a.m. on June 10, Ambia’s Tesla struck the little girl. She was pronounced dead almost an hour later at Connecticut Children’s in Hartford.

Manchester police Detective Jeremy Curtis was able to reconstruct Akari’s path of travel by looking at neighborhood surveillance videos. Around 4:15 a.m., she walked in a southern direction toward the end of her driveway, briefly went into the road and then began running east on the sidewalk on the north side of Bissell Street, the warrant said. She ran north on Harrison Street near Pearl Street a few minutes later, and apparently went through East Cemetery to East Center Street, the warrant said.

Footage from the 300 block of East Center Street showed Akari running east in the road at 4:28 a.m., it said. She approached a home’s front door, rang the doorbell – which the homeowners apparently didn’t hear – and began running back toward East Center Street, where she was struck fewer than two minutes later, according to the warrant.

Surveillance cameras also picked up her parents leaving the house five minutes apart in separate attempts to find her, the warrant said; Biron found out what had happened after approaching the accident scene and began to cry.

Later that day, police talked to the parents separately, it said, and a visibly-upset Cortes said the door alarms had just arrived.

“Nathael believed it was the first night they’d be able to sleep because they thought they had done everything to keep [Akari] in the residence,” the warrant said.

Asked how his daughter could have gotten out of the house with the deadbolts – one on the main door and the other on a door on the west side of the house – he said, “I think she unlocked it with the key, I don’t know. The key was in the door and I know I didn’t leave it in the door,” he said, according to the warrant. He said he knew the main door, which faces north, was locked when he went to bed but then added that he thought his daughter left through the door on the west side of the house, it said.

Last police heard, that door, which also had a deadbolt, had another heavy, wooden door propped up against it, which would have been impossible for a 4-year-old to move, the warrant said.

Biron told police she moved the heavy door that had been leaning against the west door when she went to search for her daughter around 5 a.m., the warrant said, but she couldn’t remember whether she had to unlock it.

“Although these safety precautions were put in place, it is unknown if the deadbolts were actually locked or where the keys to the deadbolt were placed,” Curtis wrote in the warrant, adding, “Taylor and Nathael did not provide sufficient information when interviewed by DCF Investigator Delgado on 6/10/2026 as to how they were able to exit the west door on the morning of 6/10/2026 to look for [Akari] and if the deadbolt needed to be unlocked or not.”

As far as the marijuana in the child’s blood, Cortes said he smokes cannabis, but only outside the house, it said.

Delgado told police that a few years earlier, Akari had to be taken to Connecticut Children’s because she was lethargic, and tested positive for marijuana, the warrant said; her parents said she often picked up things off the ground and put them in her mouth, and the case worker noticed the girl doing the same thing in the hospital.

At the time, the agency did not find sufficient evidence to conclude the girl had been neglected, the warrant said.