A New York City child welfare supervisor charged in connection with the death of a starved and beaten 4-year-old girl says she told her superiors the caseworker couldn’t handle his workload.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Chereece Bell says she had asked her bosses to transfer caseworker Damon Adams out of her Brooklyn unit three months before Marchella Brett-Pierce died. Adams is also charged in connection with the girl’s September death.

Bell and Adams each face charges of criminally negligent homicide, marking the first time in New York that welfare workers have been charged in connection with the death of a child.

Bell says she and her bosses also discussed taking Adams‘ cases away from him but that didn’t happen.

Adams’ lawyer tells the Journal he can’t confirm that.

The Administration for Children’s Services workers pleaded not guilty last week to criminally negligent homicide and other charges.

The Journal says the agency declined to comment. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said last week he had “100 percent confidence” in the city’s child welfare commissioner.

The mother of the 4-year-old child, who authorities said was starved, beaten and tied to her bed, was indicted last year on murder and other charges. Marchella’s grandmother was indicted last week along with the welfare workers. She was charged with manslaughter.

Marchella weighed just 18 pounds when she died Sept. 2. The child was born with underdeveloped lungs, had serious trouble breathing and had a breathing tube in her throat, authorities said. She had been hospitalized in the months before her death.

ACS last year admitted failures in the case, and described Marchella’s home care as “grossly inadequate” in a report following her death last year. The caseworker and worker are no longer employed there.

If convicted, Adams faces up to seven years in prison and Bell faces up to four years.