[3] Much of the outrage was also focused on the perceived failure of the police to press charges against her adoptive parents, even though three suspicious child abuse reports were filed by Jeong-In's day-care teachers, a family friend, and a pediatrician.
The pediatrician had examined Jeong-In and found multiple bruises on her body, and such a significant weight loss that it was perceived as evidence of abuse and malnutrition.
On October 13, 2020, Jeong-In was brought to the hospital by her adoptive mother by taxi and died a few hours after due to cardiac arrest.
The forensic doctor testified in the 4th trial that he suspected that there was at least another fatal beating around three to five days before Jeong-In died, which fell on a public holiday in South Korea, indicating that both adoptive parents were at home.
While in the same household with Jang Hayeong and Ahn Sungeun for 8 months, Jeong-In was systematically abused and tortured in many brutal ways, including being regularly beaten, which caused multiple bone fractures, and starvation because they didn't like the smell of her feces.
Her adoptive parents left her alone at home for over three hours a day, for a minimum of fifteen times, during the two months she was absent from daycare (July to September 2020).
Two months after the adoption, the daycare teachers started to observe unusual bruises on Jeong-In's face and ears.
When they found more bruises on her thighs, abdomen, neck, and collar bone fractures, the teachers reported a suspected child abuse case to the police on May 25, 2020.
The police and the child protection institution started to investigate but closed the case with the conclusion that no apparent abuse founded.
After being dehydrated, she took a few sips of milk that the teacher tried to give her, but she immediately panted after drinking the liquid, and her body began to shiver.
After several rounds of cardiac arrest and resuscitation in the ER, Jeong-In died on October 13, 2020, at the age of 16 months.
While Jeong-In was fighting for her life in the ER, her adoptive mother was perusing online shopping malls and looking for a fishcake to buy outside of the emergency room.
He had never seen a ruptured pancreas in a pediatric case, and he concluded that Jeong-In was probably stomped on multiple times on her stomach by adults.
Additionally, based on some recovered tissue found in Jeong-In's organs, the doctors also believed that there was another severe beating that happened 3–5 days prior to her death.