NEW YORK (AP) – A 7-year-old girl found dead in a Brooklyn apartment she shared with five siblings was bound, held captive and forced to use a litter box before she was killed by a blow to the head, authorities said Wednesday.

The girl, Nixzmary Brown, died amid an investigation by the Administration for Children’s Services into alleged abuse in the home. The case follows recent reports about troubling holes in the city’s safety net for abused children.

The death was ruled a homicide after an autopsy found the child died from a brain hemorrhage caused by blunt impact to the head, said medical examiner’s office spokeswoman Ellen Borakove.

Detectives were questioning the mother and a man believed to be the father of at least two of the children but not the dead girl. Their names were not made public, and police officials declined further comment.

A law enforcement official said there was evidence the girl had been held captive in a room where she was bound by her ankles to a chair. Investigators believe a litter box placed inside the room was her toilet, the official added.

“It appeared she had been singled out from the other children for abuse,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation had not been completed and nobody had been charged.

The mother told authorities she found the girl unconscious in their home in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section at about 4 a.m. Wednesday and called 911. The child was pronounced dead at the scene by emergency medical technicians.

The five other children, ages 6 months to 9 years, were removed from the home for examination at an area hospital.

ACS caseworkers already were investigating an allegation of abuse against the girl reported on Dec. 1, 2005. Another allegation from earlier last year proved unfounded, the agency said, adding that both investigations involved visits to the home.

ACS Commissioner John Mattingly said in a statement he was “deeply disturbed” by the death, but he provided no details about the previous allegations.

Mattingly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city was reviewing how it investigates claims of child abuse.

“Overall, ACS does a very good job, but any tragedy … is one too many,” the mayor said. “I have enormous confidence in Mattingly, and he’ll see what we can do to tighten up our procedures, to do investigations faster.”

Last month, ACS released reports criticizing its intervention in two households before children there ended up dead.

Both cases involved children who had been removed from their homes following allegations of abuse but were allowed to return: A 16-month-old boy drowned in a bathtub while his mother listened to CDs in another room, and a 7-year-old girl died after her father kneed her in the stomach and beat her with a belt over two days, authorities said.

The reports found that a supervisor may have falsified records about the boy. Caseworkers also failed to properly respond to a doctor’s suspicions that the girl was being abused, the reports said.

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