We hate to see anyone lose their job. However, in the case of three Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services employees who were recently terminated, we hope the terminations were the proper move. We also hope the agency learned from its mistakes and will take further steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

After a month-long internal investigation into the case involving Armani Hill, 4, of Natchez who died of abuse, MDCPS fired two case workers and a supervisor, who had closed an investigation into Hill’s alleged abuse just one day before she died of abuse.

No action can bring Hill back to life.

The window to save Hill passed when she died, allegedly at the hands of the man who was entrusted to care for her and Hills’ sister, 3, who also was severely injured by the abuse and has since been released from the hospital into custody of another family as her mother and her mother’s boyfriend have been charged in her sister’s death. In a press statement shortly after Hill died of blunt force trauma, MDCPS issued a press statement expressing sorrow at the loss and explaining why the case was closed.

“At no time during that monitoring period did any safety concerns arise or were any new concerns of child abuse or harm noted,” MDCPS said of the in-home investigation that lasted from January to May. “The in-home case involving the family was closed on June 4 after MDCPS staff met with both of the children, the mother and the grandmother.”

We trust the MDCPS’s investigation into how the case failed Hill was handled fairly for the employees who were terminated. Above all, however, we are sorry MDCPS’s investigation failed to save Hill’s life.

We are hopeful, that the review sheds light on how the investigation went wrong beyond any missteps by certain employees and what can be done to ensure such a failure never happens again.

Too many children’s lives depend on the agency to protect them for such a failure to happen again.