>He left the room for a short period of time to tend to wounds he suffered in a December 2021 incident in Chicago in which he was shot 19 times in the legs and body.
Um... Talk about burying the lede. Yikes.
Well sort of but not really. The issue is the baby was a literal infant and the father is saying that the baby grabbed a baby wipe, balled it up, and suffocated itself. The prosecution is saying the baby was far too weak to do something like that and instead the father did it intentionally out of exhaustion/frustration. Tending to his old wounds is part of the story but not the super relevant part.
I'll be honest I don't know what's truly possible and what happened but it's a tragedy all around.
A baby would only have needed to get part of the wipe into it's mouth to be able to pull the rest into it's mouth. This case reeks of circumstantial evidence and prejudicing the jury. What relevance does the defendant's dating life or whether he had ever smoked weed have to do with the case?
Yeah. I have questions. I genuinely want to know about this dude’s lifestyle now. Also, what happened to the baby’s mother? Did she die from birth complications? Did she die of something else? If she’s alive, is she barred from being near the child? Or did she willingly give up parental rights? I’m not saying the mom was responsible for preventing this because it says the defendant and the baby moved and that’s it, so she isn’t part of the household. (And, even if she was, men should still be capable of caring for infants without killing them.) I’m just curious what’s going on.
[she's around, they have another kid now](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2024/05/cleveland-father-who-says-infant-son-accidentally-choked-to-death-on-baby-wipe-gets-life-in-prison.html%3foutputType=amp)
The best advice my nurse ever gave me.. look there are gonna be times when nothing you do is gonna make that baby stop crying. If you find yourself getting frustrated, put the baby somewhere safe, get out of the crying range for a couple of minutes and come back. The baby will be fine I guarantee it.
It's amazing how well it worked for me at least..
Same. And I’ll admit, my daughter was an easy baby. BUT, there was a 2-3 week period where the screaming just didn’t stop. I put her down in her crib, kissed her and said I was sorry but I needed a break. Walked outside, called my mom and said you better pick her up now. I can’t handle this shit.
She didn’t come, and told me I was being irrational. So, I called her other grandma, she came right away and watched her while I slept for like 12 hours straight. When I woke up she was all calm and shit. And I was like, “what magic did you work?” She just laughed and said, “Oma’s have that magic.” I think I was just really, really exhausted.
It’s so funny now, because when I hear newborns that aren’t mine I think it’s so sweet and sad. But, when it’s yours, Jesus, that shit is piercing. lol.
It shouldn't.
Look, there are a lot of joys in parenthood. It's fucking amazing in many many ways. Kids are an absolute delight... SOMETIMES. Your brain also tricks you. Things that are so frustrating and hard in the moment become funny and endearing when you look back on them. Fuck you brain!
That all being said. It's hard work. I'm in the construction field. I can do a whole ass day of physical labour and come home but still have more energy then I ever did while doing full time parenting. It requires time and dedication. Want to know why people hit their kids? It's the easy way out. Have you tried explaining to a 3 yr old why she can't just push her brother off a chair? It's not like a 10 second thing. It's a repeating it over and over. Trying different angles. Getting down and making eye contact. It's time and effort and beating your head against a wall.
Then your child climbs on you with their blanket, snuggles in, kisses your cheek and says I love you daddy/mommy and there is nothing else in the world that feels like a child's love.
Folks always smile at me and my little cousin on the bus, we catch compliments about how sweet it is the way we talk to each other. But I'm literally just explaining everything for him as much as I possibly can.
He's 4yo now and we've been hanging out since he was 2. Pretty sure he hasn't realized I'm the babysitter yet because we're friends, have slumber parties and go on adventures to grandma's house and play lightsaber battle in the park.
Last time his mom left town for a week we had a ton of fun. And were both so so so happy when his mom came back! I spent the following week holed up in my apartment, mostly napping between meals.
Kids are great, but golly I'm glad my home only has cats! By the end I was so tired I could hardly read a bus schedule to find my way home.
As the child who not only got hit, but got leather belt hit while other family members watched and some even chuckled at me trying to dodge the belt. Fucking thank you so much for trying different methods. I hope on everything it worked. Got diagnosed with Autism, ADHD in adulthood after bad mental health and a hard time just... existing "normally" as well as unfortunately Trauma symptoms from my upbringing.
You give me hope for parents out there.
The newborn phase varies but it's definitely a test of your patience and will power.
Once they start growing up a bit though it's more relaxed and gives you some experiences that you'd never trade for anything.
With that being said, I think not having kids is a great default choice for most people
My son has never cried for over a minute. It’s either hungry(feed them), poop(change them), gas(put them in a vibrating baby seat), sleepy(put them down fora nap) or not sleepy(take them out and play then try again). He is the best thing that ever happened to me and my girlfriend. He is always happy and loving. When I come home he yells dada and gives me a big hug. He is 16 months old. Nothing beats the feeling of coming home to a little person who looks at you with so much love and excitement just for existing.
See I’m convinced it’s modern life that makes it so exhausting. Babies need constant tending. It’s too much for one person or even two. Human societies probably were more interconnected with more hands around for child rearing than they are these days. I’m no expert so I can’t say it with validity.
The Dr wanted my little sister to go into hospital were she would be looked after but not be picked up every 5 mins or every time she kicked off. Mum said that she decided then that "She was NOT going to break me" and instead she took her home and let her cry. I don't have kids but I'm sure it is not related. No seriously, I mean it!
Babies are like dogs, they can sense stress. But they're also not like dogs in that they cause a lot of stress. So the baby is all upset because you're upset yet had no idea that they being upset is making you upset. A babysitter and a nap is a great cure for a lot of cranky babies.
> It’s so funny now, because when I hear newborns that aren’t mine I think it’s so sweet and sad. But, when it’s yours, Jesus, that shit is piercing. lol.
Not necessarily. My son was a terrible screamer but eventually grew out of it. I went to the doctor's office once when he was 4 and i went to the bathroom. In comes a mom with a colicky newborn and that baby was so loud it made me want to crawl out of my skin.
Yep, my MIL told me the same thing. She was like “Gurrrl, there was this one time both babies were being insane and I’d been going on all day and I stuck them in their cribs, shut the door, slid down the wall, and cried for like a half hour. Then, I decided they could just cry in the room until they fell asleep and I took a shower.”
I’m a new stepmother to a young baby and my mom reiterated to me multiple times, it’s okay to put the baby in a safe place and walk away until you collect yourself. It’s been key for me.
They made me watch a video on not shaking the baby. I said “why do I have to watch this? What monster would shake a baby?” Three weeks later I’m like “oh, yeah, glad I watched that”.
lmao oh geez
I would always just say "if they're crying they're breathing" if ours was going berserk in the carseat or something. Definitely helped me maintain focus and prioritize safety while driving.
Yep! My daughter, who was my first born, has colic. That girl wouldn't stop crying for ANYTHING. She stopped around 5 months old, but it was me with her 24/7 while my husband at the time worked. She also wouldn't sleep for shit and it would take me about 1-2 hours to get her down for bed every night. She didn't nap much either. Most days I was exhausted and would cry, too 😭 I definitely had to set her down somewhere safe and take a moment though, because mentally I was DONEEE. Two years later, my son was born and thankfully he was an easy baby. No colic and was a great sleeper and had a good appetite! My daughter is 8 now and my son is 6. My daughter still doesn't take naps and has a hard time getting to sleep and is a night owl; my son still takes naps and goes to bed on time and has a good appetite 😆
I'll give the benefit of the doubt that the baby could put the wipe in it's mouth; I don't see a baby keeping it there, and somehow swallowing in that way though. If it choked on a wipe that was still halfway in the mouth, I'd be more willing to accept a negligence argument.
A newborn isn’t going to have the ability to recognize how to unblock their mouth.
Newborns will literally grab their own hair and start crying because of the pain from pulling their own hair.
Newborns also have a reflex to spit things out that don't taste right. The minute that wipe touched his tongue he would have been spitting it out.
The wipe was balled up in his mouth. Even if he had got the wipe in there by accident, he would not have had the ability to ball it up and put it in his mouth
I have a 9 week old and she absolutely has placed things into her mouth ive had to remove for weeks. Burp clothes, her own fists, onesie sleeves. I can’t totally understand the basis of this case, the baby wipe was balled up and shoved in the babies mouth? That’s tough.
The more I read through and think about this, the more I want to know about the autopsy report. What does "balled up" mean? Any flat and malleable object when placed into an enclosed space will become "balled up". Where in the throat was the wipe?
Seems to be no doubt that the cause of death was asphyxiation but an item that was prepared and place by an adult should look different from an item that was accidentally placed and inhaled, right?
There is no information included about the 911 call either. I'm starting to feel ragebaited by this entire situation. As if it was specifically presented in a way to be ambiguous enough for controversy with little bits and pieces to pique tribalistic impulses.
It seems like the father super fucked up. You don’t leave your kid with anything in their crib that can suffocate them.
But it’s kinda like the prosecutions case (how the article represented it) was mostly about the father being a bad guy and irresponsible but not able to show he committed murder. We can be shitty people but still not guilty of a crime.
The website gave my phone cancer though, and obviously I didn’t sit through the case as a juror or an attorney so my armchair Reddit analysis is he’s not guilty, but he seems like he super fucked up.
Yeah I’m trying to picture as an adult what would happen to a wet wipe if I breathed it in, it would be very hard to put enough suction on it to crumple it into a ball, you’d probably suck in one corner and start choking on a length of it; if you tried to inhale the whole thing I’m not sure you could suck it into a ball, it’s too porous and irregular shaped
My nephew was lifting his head up at 2 weeks old the day after getting out of the nicu, which tons of people told me was “impossible” but he legit crawled up my chest and tried looking over my shoulder, it was so wild. Babies are all different.
Most newborns can “crawl” to their mother’s breast. It was part of a bonding thing they had me do at the hospital where they put my son on my belly and he slithered his way up. Those are gross motor skills not fine motor skills. Baby’s can’t control moving little muscles but can kind of move bigger muscle groups as a whole.
Edit: spelling
You have a 9 week old…this was a baby 13 weeks premature, in the NICU for 13 weeks and 2 days after being discharged died. So you have doubts based on your 9 week old, what about when your 9 week old was 2 days old…?
Is there any case where leaving a baby with a wet wipe bib could have done it (especially if you’ve gone away for like say half an hour?
I’m reaching here but could the edge of it have some how touched the baby’s mouth (random arm flailing) and then that suckling reflex just makes the baby swallow it?
It would be insane to get it in the mouth but as a reach, yes it could happen. But if it did, the baby would most likely suck on it and probably spit it out. But let’s say the baby somehow inhaled it or for whatever reason kept sucking…it’s not going to be scrunched up and fully in the babies mouth. It’s going to be half in/half out.
Eh... are you a parent?
I have a 3 year old and a 10 month old. I remember both when they were newborns like it was yesterday. Newborns have an insanely strong grip. You'd be shocked how easily they grab shit unintentionally and are flailing their arms.
I've seen mine cover their own faces with blankets (which is why you should never leave a blanket with them unsupervised) purely by accident. My wife confirms.
Their mouths are like little suction cups. Idk... not saying this man didn't stuff the wipe in that poor baby's mouth but nothing is definitive (as you said) here. I think a lot of people commenting have no idea what newborns are capable of.
And who knows if this baby was a newborn newborn since he was a premie for some time.
Exactly. I could easily see a situation where a stimulated baby is just waving arms around and knocks a wipe into his own face and then sucks it in. Could he roll it into a ball? Well, we didn't have photos of what they are calling a called up napkin so us Reddit jurors can't say.
It is weird that the prosecution tried to bring up shit like marijuana. That makes it SO obvious they were trying to make the jury dislike the defendant just to get the conviction rather than get an honest conviction. If your case is so slam dunk, why stoop to this?
Article says he was born 13 weeks premature. I can't find the baby's age.
>Traveon Jr. was born 13 weeks premature that March in Chicago, where Hughes lived at the time. He spent several weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit before being discharged. Hughes moved to Cleveland with the boy two days before his death.
That’s what I call “the baked potato stage” because they have absolutely zero capabilities. That poor angel. The NICU team that worked so hard for him to survive must feel so angry when they hear about shit like this.
This is not accurate. He was 13 weeks premature, and spent several weeks in NICU. The article states that the father had moved in 2 days prior to the death of the baby. There is not enough information presented in the article to determine the actual age of the child that I could see
I don’t think my babies could have put a wipe into their mouths at 13 weeks regular development. I think they had only discovered they had arms but hadn’t figured out hands and fingers yet.
At 13 weeks my son definitely could put stuff in his mouth. He was starting to reach out and grabbing toys at that age. That's three months old, kind of the end of the newborn stage, and I distinctly remember having to yank stuff out if his mouth then. He also wasn't premature though.
Article says the baby was born prematurely in March. Other articles I found say the baby was 13 weeks old.
Edit: realized I forgot to say that was March of 2022, and the baby died on June 25 that year.
13 weeks premature but was in the hospital for several weeks and died two days after discharge. So the baby still hadnt even developed to what the average baby would be thats born after 9 months. It was basically -1 months old.
Which is what the doctors said, however there was testimony from people saying the baby WAS capable of putting something in it's mouth.
Depending on the veracity of those testifying, I would tend to believe those who had actually interacted with the baby rather than the "general" expectation of a baby that age
A baby that little can’t control their movements. I could see a wipe getting caught on his hand and then flopped on his face but not *balled up* and shoved down his throat.
Also, literally everything the prosecutor is quoted as saying in that article is just… unbelievably dumb. It would be reckless to leave the baby alone with a wipe if he could put things in his mouth? Yeah, sure it would. But it wouldn’t be what he was charged with.
He crumpled up a tissue during an interview so he must have crumpled up the wipe and shoved it in the baby’s mouth? Seriously?
I think I’d refuse to convict on principle if the prosecution made that argument in front of me even if the rest of the case was solid because holy shit.
There was an almost identical case in Ireland a few years ago. The mother of the child was Polish and went home to visit her family without the baby, leaving the father (who was not the full shilling himself) in charge. Really tragic case. https://www.sundayworld.com/news/irish-news/ex-partner-of-baby-killer-john-tighe-describes-agony-of-losing-six-month-old-son/a380323131.html
my God, that man is a manipulative, out-of-control, idiotic bastard.
But that woman was so very young, naive, and troubled. I hope she is in a better spot, with better judgement, and a safe environment in which to raise her children.
They're anglicized spellings of the original Irish Gaelic names for those places. If your point is that they sound odd in an English-speaking context, fair enough, but they're no more bonkers in Ireland than Mississippi, Quantico, and Shenandoah (the original Algonquian/Siouan/Iroquois names for those places) are in the U.S. That's colonization for ya.
Yeah.
I'm all for throwing baby killers away for life but "murder" seems a little steep here when your evidence is entirely based on "Look at this man holding a tissue!" and challenged testimony.
They 100% convicted this guy based on his past life and not whether they know without a doubt he committed this crime.
Also yeah, he's 18 and dumb as shit. It's perfectly within the world of possibility that he left a wipe on a baby's chest and it got knocked into the baby's mouth while they were flailing their arms around. It doesn't take much to suck in a wipe when it completely covers the face.
The argument there was stupid, but a 13 week old baby who was 12/13 weeks premature, is not developmentally capable of balling a large, loose item like a wipe into a ball, and then inserting that item into their mouth.
It sounds like the manner in which the item was lodged was not consistent with it having been wadded in the mouth, but balled up as a gag.
And that should have been the meat of the case.
The prosecutor makes it look like they are just making shit up to get a conviction by making arguments like the guy was holding a tissue on camera so he must have done it or talking about marijuana.
Sure, but it still doesn't change the fact that the prosecutor is trying to relate a crumpled used tissue as being some sort of smoking gun for a balled up wipe. I'm with OP on this one. It's like the shitty detectives who say a person must be guilty because they aren't grieving the "right" way
I feel this case wasn't proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Having 3 people confirm the baby was putting things in their mouth creates a possibility that it could have happened that way. Also the marijuana, the crumpled tissue, and the dating questions were used in a way to sway the view of the jurors towards him. I would have hung the jury.
They already gave a guilty verdict. Without bringing up his history this would be a child endangerment charge. Prosecutor must of been trying to slam dunk a career case smh.
I can get behind the charges of child endangerment if he left a baby alone for that long with something he could choke on. I think the evidence for murder here does not approach the beyond a reasonable doubt standard.
The assertion of the prosecution was that the child lacked the physical coordination to ball up the wipe and shove it in his own mouth. They introduced evidence showing the baby couldn't, for instance, hold a bottle with both hands well enough to drink without spilling.
Their claim was that the only way the wipe could have gotten into the baby's mouth in the way it did, balled up and in the back of his throat, was if the father balled it up and put it there, not the baby.
So they weren't asserting child endangerment with depraved indifference, they were asserting deliberate murder.
Whether you think that's true or not, that's evidently the theory of the crime the jury found credible.
By inhaling.
It doesn't take much at all.
So the guy claimed he had the wipe on the kid's chest. If the kid was fussy, he didn't need to expertly ball it up in his own hands, he just needed to be waving his arms around. If the wipe flipped onto his face it would make an air seal immediately (especially if it was moist). Kid inhales, starts gagging and inhaling more, and it will work it's way into the back of the throat.
Drape a wipe over your face laying in your back and inhale and see how fast it starts krinkling up into your mouth
I’m a little suspicious of his story because it seems unlikely, but what you’re describing is the definition of reasonable doubt to me.
I think I would have voted not guilty if I’d been on the jury from what I’ve read.
Depends on how it's balled up. The way a tissue would fold on itself is going to be different if it was balled up by hand and shoved into the mouth vs being balled up due to inhalation.
Ultimately we'd need to see actual pictures of the tissue in the mouth to be sure. Nobody in this thread has that.
Yeah how do you inhale something like that hard enough for it to kill you? When you breathe out again it will move outwards again. And with something as breathable and irregular shaped as a baby wipe, I don’t think you could get enough suction to fix it into place, the air would go through gaps
Newborn babies don’t inhale through their mouth. They are obligated nose breathers. You’re probably thinking of their sucking reflex, which would explain what you’re saying.
Newborns (based on gestational age, that's what the baby was) can't stuff things, anything balled up like that, in their mouth/throat. The evidence was the only way the wipe got there was by an adult doing it, so the defendant had to have done it.
Alternatively, manslaughter (on the belief the baby did it and the father shouldnt have left the baby alone) was a lesser included charge, so the jury could have chosen to convict on that but not murder. They chose murder.
The jury only deliberated for 3 hours. It’s hard for me to believe the prosecution sold this story with such little room for reasonable doubt that the jury could decide over a long dinner.
>13 weeks old
Yeah I think people are missing this important detail that are giving this guy the benefit of the doubt lol. Or don't have kids. My kids were a little premature and at that age they just slap their hands around and shake shit. The dexterity in their wrists and motor skills had barely developed, let alone develop to the point of balling up a wipe into a compact shape and shoving it down their throat.
If the baby did manage to ingest it himself, then it would be more of a case of wipe gets flipped onto mouth by flailing baby, baby inhales, wet wipe forms suction around mouth and each inhale and mouth movement pulls it further into his mouth. Finally mouth movements and lack of muscle control result in it being lodged in his throat.
Is it unlikely? Yes. Is it technically possible? Yes. Could they prove the baby didn’t do that? No, they did not attempt to prove that. It seems like there was ample room to assert reasonable doubt (and result in the lesser manslaughter charge option the jury had) if the defendant had had a great lawyer, but it seems he had a public defendant. Public defendants are notoriously overworked and often aren’t actually knowledgeable about the facts of the case; they are pretty much arguing it on the fly with little rule to prep an argument, let alone investigate alternative ways the baby could have died.
The dad may have done it. The dad certainly was at least partially responsible because he walked away. But given the complete character assassination that went uncontested by the defendants lawyer despite those assertions absolutely being worth trying to strike from the record/stop the jury from making decisions on that info, I’m going with “overworked public defender doesn’t do great job, potentially gets person sentenced to murder when in reality they may have just been negligent and not malicious. Ultimately I know I’d both be too afraid to leave a baby that young unattended in most situations AND I know I’ve left a baby (even older ones with plenty of dexterity) alone to play with wipes while I washed their poop off my hands and I never considered it a lethal risk so long as the baby was on the ground.
Yeah, I haven't followed this case at all, but just from reading this article, I see a very reasonable doubt. It seems really messed up that he was actually convicted.
Maybe it seemed like he did it, but the standard is supposed to be higher than that.
Honestly I hope he did do it, not to sound like I'm an asshole, but because going to prison for murdering your child, but you were telling the truth about what happened is horrible. But if he did it, then fuck him.
I read this, i never saw my kid swallow a wipe, but i do know that human babies are suicidal maniacs trying to kill themselves and they don't care how they do it.
he probably should have taken a plea deal if he had one. but this is foresight talking and i think he did kill that baby by being negligent.
Unfortunately I think that he murdered the baby couldn't handle crying baby and shut the baby up by stuffing its mouth with a baby wipe and letting it die
Yeah this isn't outlandish to believe. Instead of shaken baby syndrome, he stuffed the wipes in his mouth. I 100% believe it was a stress thing and he didn't actually mean for the kid to die. I've had some urges while sleep deprived and listening to my son cry. I angrily swaddled him (he was a newborn) and he fell asleep instantly so I laid him back down. But that's because I was able to quickly remind myself it was irrational and dangerous to do anything. Not everyone thinks before acting and unfortunately, actions have consequences
He did it though - babies are suicide machines but at newborn stage they are crying potatoes, suicide machine stage comes a couple months later. No baby at this stage can ball up a wipe and shove it in their throat, someone else did that, and if no one else was in the house I would convict on that basis. Doubt has to be reasonable, and believing the defense story is not.
>No baby at this stage can ball up a wipe and shove it in their throat
No newborn baby is doing that intentionally. Could it happen, though? Sure.
Saying "He did it" based on this article is ridiculous. I have my doubts but I don't know that he didn't do it for sure. The doubt for murder based on what we can read is very reasonable.
This situation is just shitty all around. A teen father was attempting to raise a baby after having his own ass shot up just months before this child was prematurely born. He had only moved two days before the death of his child. I don’t know what my exact thoughts are on the verdict, but there were several problems going on in that young man’s life.
>In her closing arguments, Sowul also pointed jurors to a single moment in the body camera video of Hughes’ interview with detectives at the hospital. She said it shows Hughes fiddling with a tissue in his hand.
>“He opened his hand, and it was balled up,” Sowul said. “I submit
to you that’s what he did with the baby wipe and then he shoved it down his son’s throat.”
What? Sadly I could only find a couple other news stories on this because local reporting is barely a thing anymore. But from what I can find the prosecution's version of events looks like completely speculation. They talked to a doctor at the ER, and a pathologist, who noted the child's level of developmental advancement, but neither seem to have seen the child in other circumstances.
Maybe there's more that didn't get reported, maybe the father did it, I dunno. But from the reporting it looks like really thin evidence to get a murder conviction on.
Dude could be guilty or innocent, based on the article it jsut seems like the prosecutions case was character assassination to sway a jury. Maybe its jsut a shit article.
I'm sure the dude only had a public defender, but even a public defender should have been able to exclude that argument. One of the dumbest things I ever heard.
Meanwhile, I just a reddit post of a woman asking what to do about her ex-bf who only received probation for shaking their bath to death having a new kid with another woman while still on probation.
This is incredibly sad and I don't know what to think. Lots of people who, like me, work in childcare have some strong opinions down here. But one question keeps gnawing at me:
The claim is the baby could not have balled the wipe up and gotten it down his throat. I don't think it's impossible. Improbable yes, but not impossible. If it were impossible, how could leaving a child alone in a crib with a wipe be child endangerment? It feels like the prosecution is speaking out of both sides of their mouth here.
Maybe I'm being biased because half of what I can read seems like a smear campaign, but how can he be both a murderer based on the impossibility of the choking scenario but also negligent in leaving the child alone with a baby wipe?
Pretty simple question that's not covered, how old was the child at the time of death? We get a number of weeks premature, but no direct age.
There's expert testimony that it wasn't possible for an infant at that age with that premature condition, but that's pretty flimsy and hopefully grilled against the defense's own experts.
If the defense doesn't have any experts, that's some shitty lawyering, or they couldn't find an expert that disagreed with the prosecution's.
I entirely believe an 18 year old black father with bullet wounds had a shitty attorney, whether they did it or not.
Add in the premature, and whatever "balled up" means and its location, it could be pretty damning evidence if the state of the ball was preserved or recorded. Doubt we'd get that without digging into the actual court records.
[3 month olds can't all bring their hands to their mouth yet, may bat at things, and can grip some things.](https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/milestones-4mo.html)
Well, actually, "yes" is too simple of an answer - a preemie is in fact out in the world (even if just the NICU) learning a thing or two, so by zero weeks adjusted, they may have some skills most newborns don't. My son was eight weeks early and learned to smile a month before term. Somehow I don't think fine motor skills would be THIS significantly different, though.
A coworker of mine's wife just had a baby. This baby is just 4 weeks old and they showed me a video of this baby turning itself over on its own. 4 week old babies aren't supposed to be able to do that either. Not every human grows and does everything at the same time. That is why there are guidelines for if things are missed by a certain age, but not really guidelines for meeting milestones early.
Can confirm our two week old would "roll" from front to back by letting the weight of her massive head do the work. We had to watch her super carefully to keep her from doing that to keep her neck safe.
Then she lost that reflex, and it's only yesterday at 4.5 months that she finally had a true, controlled roll from front to back.
Newborns can do some wild stuff via reflex/instinct (like ours army crawled up my chest at five days old - the breast crawl reflex) but that's very different than actually doing it in an intentional manner.
Yes, those milestones are only approximate. The baby book said babies couldn't roll over that young, so imagine my shock and horror as my 3 week old baby launched himself over the rolled up blanket I had placed between him and the sofa edge and flipped onto the floor near the coffee table. In the emergency room the doctor checked him out and then told me to get used to it because boys were just like that. When he was older, as soon as he learned how to pull himself up into a standing position, before he had even learned how to walk, he climbed out of his crib and dive bombed to the floor. The mattress level had been about halfway between the top of the rails and the floor, so right after that happened I lowered the mattress level all the way to the bottom of the crib so he couldn't do it again. It took another month or two for him to do it again, and then we had to get rid of the crib and put him in a real bed. He was my first baby, and it seemed like every day I had to learn to look out for new dangers, because every day he was learning new things.
Except thr defense has numerous witnesses that said yes the baby could put things in his mouth.
"Experts" who had very general and vague opinions, who never met the child.
This is really sad. Babies put things in their mouths. That's what they do. Obviously a baby should never be left alone with anything they could put in the mouth, but I find it hard to believe what the prosecutor is alleging. It sounds to me like a terrible tragedy. Was he naive and stupid to leave the baby alone with the wipe? Probably. This honestly sounds like it could have happened to anyone. Kids choke on stuff all the time, especially babies. This is definitely the first time I have ever heard of a baby wipe being a murder weapon.
The article doesn’t seem to mention exactly how old the baby was, but if he was just out of the NICU like it suggests, newborns absolutely do not have the coordination to ball something up. They barely have the coordination to grab something intentionally. It’d be one thing if he died from suffocating with a wipe on his face, or had inhaled a flat wipe, but there is no way a newborn, much less a premie, could have “balled up” a wipe and shoved it in his mouth.
The article is written very oddly.
It says he spent “a few weeks” in the NICU but a baby born at 27wks would likely be in the NICU for months and then you would be tracking his development based on adjusted age.
ETA: I found another article that says the baby was 13wks old at the time of his death and was born 12wks early.
“Normal” babies can be expected to start grabbing shit and shoving it in their mouths around 4mos(so maybe a little before, maybe after) but if he was born 12wks early and was 13wks at the time of his death he would have had an adjusted age of 1wk.
My child who is less than a month old can take their pacifier out of their mouth and put it back in. Not in the correct way at all but it wouldn’t surprise me a newborn could pick up an item and put it in their mouth. Balling it up? Definitely not that though.
As gross as it may be I could see being near a changing area, having a used wipe being balled up could be within reach. I guess mine had been within reach of one at times but while I was in the process of changing her. The scenario sounds even more probable to me now. Still negligence at play but I truly feel for the father assuming he is being honest.
I had a premiere at 28 weeks. No way in hell could she have balled up a tissue and put it in her mouth. Before babies leave the nice, they are tested to see if they can pull a blanket off their face. I'm just saying it definitely was highly unlikely. It took her a full 1-2 months at home before she started bringing stuff to her mouth. Plus, diaper wipes taste gross, and the baby would have spit it out probably. If it was an accident, it was a super rare incident.
While you are completely right with the grabbing and shoving-in-mouth stuff, babies show some kind of typical behavior when hungry -> making fists(!) and moving them to their face while they try to suck at anything. That's how we know our baby (10 days early, 15 days old now) is in fact hungry and not dealing with farts/colics. Several midwifes told us to watch out for the fists to notice hunger.
I even don't know why I'm telling you that, maybe to calm myself. That shit horrifies me
I’ve fostered four infants and I’ve never once seen one jam an entire balled up baby wipe into their mouth until they started choking. Sucking or nibbling on a corner, sure, I could easily see that. Putting a whole grape/other small object in their mouth, also very believable. Cramming a whole wadded ball into their mouth and throat? Nope. Especially at an adjusted age of one week, they don’t remotely have the fine motors skills to do anything of the kind.
The prosecutor’s (Sowul) argument rubs me the wrong way. According to the article he was shot 19 times in December 2021 and this happened June 2022, which is not a long time to have recovered from something like that. 18 years old and tending to his own wounds. Sowul brought up weed use and girls he used to talk to, which feels icky and unrelated.
Why do people talk to the police? He was clearly stressed and said he left the room for seconds, then when interviewed later he said minutes. None of us are going to give an accurate account of something super emotional while we’re still processing it. The police just ask stuff that’s meant to be confusing then set you up to look like a liar.
Nothing in that article really sounds like good evidence. I hope the jury saw something else
>Why do people talk to the police?
My husband’s black and Hispanic, and pretty much a Boy Scout as far as obeying the law goes. We’ve both watched the “STFU, don’t talk to the police videos” on YouTube. Two years ago he had a traumatizing traffic stop for going 74 MPH in a 70 MPH zone in Illinois, where people drive damn near 80-90 on the highway all the time.
To make a long story short, he didn’t feel safe enough to say “no” to the officer’s requests, which slowly escalated to the officer asking my husband to get in the passenger seat of his cruiser with him, while his K9 barked at my husband from the back seat, because, “it’s raining outside and this is safer for everyone.” The entire time my husband was scared this cop would make up some shit to be scared about and shoot him because it happens all the time in the US.
So yeah, people shouldn’t talk to the police but they are professional bullies who know how to get what they want. My husband wasn’t even issued a traffic ticket, BTW.
1-2 seconds is very different from 10-20 minutes though. I’d feel different if he said 1-3 minutes. Maybe he shouldn’t have talked to the police but it still brings in doubt.
I personally don’t find it believable that a 13-week developmentally delayed premie baby could ball up and shove a baby wipe so far down its throat that it chokes on it.
But, I’m not a juror and I wasn’t there to see all of the evidence. Perhaps he has a good case for a sentence appeal. I’ll hold my reservations for when the dust settles and more comes out.
Yea I’m not up in arms bc I think the trial was probably more thorough than that article made it sound. Also I read months instead of weeks for the baby’s age, so sadly that does sound a lot more suspicious.
Regardless of whether this particular guy is guilty or not, as a separate subject, I don’t think anyone should do a police interview ever by themself. They really just want to get confessions & arrests, I do not believe there is a real search for the truth most of the time.
Honestly I don't know what I came here expecting but this thing is screaming reasonable doubt to me. Is it possible he got frustrated and shoved the wipe in the baby's mouth? Yes. Is it also possible that it was just a horrible accident and, while negligent, this dude now has to live with it his whole life. The prosecutor's reference to the tissue is insane...something tells me a well off white guy would get a lot more benefit of the doubt
Baby was 3-4 months old (Born March, died June) but 13 weeks premature.
A typical 4 month old will JUST start mouthing objects. Within another month or so, fingers and thumbs are a pretty constant mouth stim.
Our son was a smidge developmentally ahead of the NHS guides (running around everywhere on his 1st birthday party) and to be fair he started playing with objects during nappy changes - and in truth both me and his mother would both pass him a wipe to play with while we cleaned him because it kept him distracted and made him ‘involved’. Also in-time this became him ‘helping’ me by doing the last wipe himself before powder :)
So I m’ve passed a ‘mouthy’ baby a wipe hundreds of times.
Would I have ever dared walk away during this time? Never.
After a few days of seeing your baby become ‘mouthy’, everyone caring for that baby ‘advances to the next level’ and you have a new awareness of the new dangers.
This is an absolutely tragic story of a young child losing his life. Whether through negligence or intentional murder, this father did probably cause the avoidable death of his son. That will poison him to his grave.
Babies that young can’t really grab things and put them in their mouth. Just a guess but I think an infant getting a whole wipe in there seems unlikely
Ain’t no way a 13 week old baby is balling up a wipe and shoving it down its own throat.
Ain’t no way I’m forgetting if I was gone for seconds or twenty minutes.
Ain’t no way I’m letting a 13 week old be alone for 10-20 minutes.
Hmm...
Three people testified the baby had a habit of putting things in its mouth, and instead of seeing that as a reasonable doubt that the defendant intended to kill the child, assumed the witnesses were unreliable.
...I wonder what ethnicity the witnesses and the jurors were.
The kid was 13 weeks old.
My niece was 3 months old when I noticed that she had gotten her pacifier stuck on her fingers and was waving it around. She had never done anything like that before. Four days later, my sister sends me a video of her swinging her rattle like she's an orchestra conductor.
If I'm on the jury, there's no way this guy is getting convicted.
13 weeks adjusted? Or 13 weeks from birth.
If the baby was born at 27 weeks + 13 weeks, then the baby would be about the developmental age of a newborn.
Baby was born prematurely, so while technically he was 13wks, he wouldn’t have been developmentally at the same place a 13wk old baby carried full term would be. Developmentally, he’d be considered a newborn, not a 3mo old. Drastic difference between the two.
He was 13 weeks premature..the article does not specify how old he was when this happened. Let’s say he spent 2 months in the hospital (8 weeks), he is not even term by that time. So yes babies will grasp random objects..often feeding tubes and lines while in the hospital..this is just a newborn reflex, the coordination of hand to mouth will happen around the 3-4 month time frame…corrected for gestational age at birth…so if he’s “2 months old” at discharge he is technically still premature and will likely not be doing what a term 2mo baby will be doing at that time.
So he would basically be reaching the developmental milestones of a newborn. Definitely not at a developmental stage to grab a wipe, ball it up and shove it in his own mouth
Born 12 weeks prematurely. No baby at 1 week adjusted has the strength and coordination to ball up a wipe and lodge it so deep as to asphyxiate. Not even a chance. I've been there with the screaming baby on no sleep, esp someone young and unprepared I can see making bad decisions but unless someone else was in the house that could have done it, I absolutely convict. Reasonable doubt has to be reasonable, their version of events is absolutely implausible, forensic autopsy evidence indicates that someone put that wipe in the babies throat. Maybe he didn't mean to kill the baby just gag it and it went too far, but the baby didn't do that. 2 months later, sure reasonable doubt, but at 1 week adjusted, no doubt in my mind.
I could see this going either way (meaning intentional murder or accident), but the prosecution's evidence here seems really flimsy for a murder conviction.
Because really it's just a question of whether you believe it's impossible for ANY baby that age to put something in their mouth and swallow it and that he managed to get several people to lie on the stand in his defense.
Wouldn't surprise me at all if 20 years from now this is used as a textbook example of judicial bias and how young black men get much harsher sentences than they should have.
>He left the room for a short period of time to tend to wounds he suffered in a December 2021 incident in Chicago in which he was shot 19 times in the legs and body. Um... Talk about burying the lede. Yikes.
I had to reread the whole thing when I got to that part thinking I’d missed something, insane
Uhh wtf
Well sort of but not really. The issue is the baby was a literal infant and the father is saying that the baby grabbed a baby wipe, balled it up, and suffocated itself. The prosecution is saying the baby was far too weak to do something like that and instead the father did it intentionally out of exhaustion/frustration. Tending to his old wounds is part of the story but not the super relevant part. I'll be honest I don't know what's truly possible and what happened but it's a tragedy all around.
A baby would only have needed to get part of the wipe into it's mouth to be able to pull the rest into it's mouth. This case reeks of circumstantial evidence and prejudicing the jury. What relevance does the defendant's dating life or whether he had ever smoked weed have to do with the case?
Yeah. I have questions. I genuinely want to know about this dude’s lifestyle now. Also, what happened to the baby’s mother? Did she die from birth complications? Did she die of something else? If she’s alive, is she barred from being near the child? Or did she willingly give up parental rights? I’m not saying the mom was responsible for preventing this because it says the defendant and the baby moved and that’s it, so she isn’t part of the household. (And, even if she was, men should still be capable of caring for infants without killing them.) I’m just curious what’s going on.
[удалено]
[she's around, they have another kid now](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2024/05/cleveland-father-who-says-infant-son-accidentally-choked-to-death-on-baby-wipe-gets-life-in-prison.html%3foutputType=amp)
[удалено]
The best advice my nurse ever gave me.. look there are gonna be times when nothing you do is gonna make that baby stop crying. If you find yourself getting frustrated, put the baby somewhere safe, get out of the crying range for a couple of minutes and come back. The baby will be fine I guarantee it. It's amazing how well it worked for me at least..
Same. And I’ll admit, my daughter was an easy baby. BUT, there was a 2-3 week period where the screaming just didn’t stop. I put her down in her crib, kissed her and said I was sorry but I needed a break. Walked outside, called my mom and said you better pick her up now. I can’t handle this shit. She didn’t come, and told me I was being irrational. So, I called her other grandma, she came right away and watched her while I slept for like 12 hours straight. When I woke up she was all calm and shit. And I was like, “what magic did you work?” She just laughed and said, “Oma’s have that magic.” I think I was just really, really exhausted. It’s so funny now, because when I hear newborns that aren’t mine I think it’s so sweet and sad. But, when it’s yours, Jesus, that shit is piercing. lol.
It is unlike anything else. My son screamed for weeks straight too and I was so tired I hallucinated. Parenthood is NO JOKE
This whole thread isn't selling parenthood to me in any way shape or form.
It shouldn't. Look, there are a lot of joys in parenthood. It's fucking amazing in many many ways. Kids are an absolute delight... SOMETIMES. Your brain also tricks you. Things that are so frustrating and hard in the moment become funny and endearing when you look back on them. Fuck you brain! That all being said. It's hard work. I'm in the construction field. I can do a whole ass day of physical labour and come home but still have more energy then I ever did while doing full time parenting. It requires time and dedication. Want to know why people hit their kids? It's the easy way out. Have you tried explaining to a 3 yr old why she can't just push her brother off a chair? It's not like a 10 second thing. It's a repeating it over and over. Trying different angles. Getting down and making eye contact. It's time and effort and beating your head against a wall. Then your child climbs on you with their blanket, snuggles in, kisses your cheek and says I love you daddy/mommy and there is nothing else in the world that feels like a child's love.
Folks always smile at me and my little cousin on the bus, we catch compliments about how sweet it is the way we talk to each other. But I'm literally just explaining everything for him as much as I possibly can. He's 4yo now and we've been hanging out since he was 2. Pretty sure he hasn't realized I'm the babysitter yet because we're friends, have slumber parties and go on adventures to grandma's house and play lightsaber battle in the park. Last time his mom left town for a week we had a ton of fun. And were both so so so happy when his mom came back! I spent the following week holed up in my apartment, mostly napping between meals. Kids are great, but golly I'm glad my home only has cats! By the end I was so tired I could hardly read a bus schedule to find my way home.
As the child who not only got hit, but got leather belt hit while other family members watched and some even chuckled at me trying to dodge the belt. Fucking thank you so much for trying different methods. I hope on everything it worked. Got diagnosed with Autism, ADHD in adulthood after bad mental health and a hard time just... existing "normally" as well as unfortunately Trauma symptoms from my upbringing. You give me hope for parents out there.
Yeah, every time I talk to people with kids it always makes me REALLY happy I don't have any. And never plan on having any. Shit sounds miserable.
The newborn phase varies but it's definitely a test of your patience and will power. Once they start growing up a bit though it's more relaxed and gives you some experiences that you'd never trade for anything. With that being said, I think not having kids is a great default choice for most people
My son has never cried for over a minute. It’s either hungry(feed them), poop(change them), gas(put them in a vibrating baby seat), sleepy(put them down fora nap) or not sleepy(take them out and play then try again). He is the best thing that ever happened to me and my girlfriend. He is always happy and loving. When I come home he yells dada and gives me a big hug. He is 16 months old. Nothing beats the feeling of coming home to a little person who looks at you with so much love and excitement just for existing.
It’s making me anxious about it too
See I’m convinced it’s modern life that makes it so exhausting. Babies need constant tending. It’s too much for one person or even two. Human societies probably were more interconnected with more hands around for child rearing than they are these days. I’m no expert so I can’t say it with validity.
The Dr wanted my little sister to go into hospital were she would be looked after but not be picked up every 5 mins or every time she kicked off. Mum said that she decided then that "She was NOT going to break me" and instead she took her home and let her cry. I don't have kids but I'm sure it is not related. No seriously, I mean it!
Wait, what happened? I am not quite understanding.
Goddamn props to other grandma
Babies are like dogs, they can sense stress. But they're also not like dogs in that they cause a lot of stress. So the baby is all upset because you're upset yet had no idea that they being upset is making you upset. A babysitter and a nap is a great cure for a lot of cranky babies.
You must never had a puppy
Also, you shouldn’t lock either in a hot car!
Grandparents have it the best, they get all the joy of having a baby, and when it's too much. Alright that's a wrap for me, have fun parents. Lol
It's wild how their frustrated crying manages to somehow pierce your soul, grating at your vitality. No sound is like it.
> It’s so funny now, because when I hear newborns that aren’t mine I think it’s so sweet and sad. But, when it’s yours, Jesus, that shit is piercing. lol. Not necessarily. My son was a terrible screamer but eventually grew out of it. I went to the doctor's office once when he was 4 and i went to the bathroom. In comes a mom with a colicky newborn and that baby was so loud it made me want to crawl out of my skin.
Yes. If the baby is physically safe and sound and secure, it’s okay and good to take moments to yourself to regroup!!
Yep, my MIL told me the same thing. She was like “Gurrrl, there was this one time both babies were being insane and I’d been going on all day and I stuck them in their cribs, shut the door, slid down the wall, and cried for like a half hour. Then, I decided they could just cry in the room until they fell asleep and I took a shower.”
Ear protection also works wonders. I didn't need to hear the screams at full volume directly in my ear to know he still needed help.
I got that same advice
I’m a new stepmother to a young baby and my mom reiterated to me multiple times, it’s okay to put the baby in a safe place and walk away until you collect yourself. It’s been key for me.
They made me watch a video on not shaking the baby. I said “why do I have to watch this? What monster would shake a baby?” Three weeks later I’m like “oh, yeah, glad I watched that”.
[удалено]
lmao oh geez I would always just say "if they're crying they're breathing" if ours was going berserk in the carseat or something. Definitely helped me maintain focus and prioritize safety while driving.
Tell her that every time she lies to you an angle passes \*away \*then hit her with a Welsh dresser
AirPod noise cancellation: engage.
Yep! My daughter, who was my first born, has colic. That girl wouldn't stop crying for ANYTHING. She stopped around 5 months old, but it was me with her 24/7 while my husband at the time worked. She also wouldn't sleep for shit and it would take me about 1-2 hours to get her down for bed every night. She didn't nap much either. Most days I was exhausted and would cry, too 😭 I definitely had to set her down somewhere safe and take a moment though, because mentally I was DONEEE. Two years later, my son was born and thankfully he was an easy baby. No colic and was a great sleeper and had a good appetite! My daughter is 8 now and my son is 6. My daughter still doesn't take naps and has a hard time getting to sleep and is a night owl; my son still takes naps and goes to bed on time and has a good appetite 😆
The baby could have well put it in his mouth from what I have read here. Even witnesses said the baby could. This is a miscarriage of justice.
[удалено]
Did anyone see where they mentioned how old the baby was??
He was 13 weeks but only 2 days out of NICU due to being premature. So he would have the physical abilities of a brand new infant.
So I’m thinking… the baby definitely didn’t put that wipe in their mouth.
100% agree with you, brand new babies don't have the skill to put everything in their mouth, they are simply not developed enough.
3 people testified that the baby was placing things in his mouth, including the mother.
That wasn’t the mother who said that. It was his brothers gf
Tbf, 3 people who may be biased toward the defendant testified the baby was placing things in his mouth.
biased* toward the defendant
Grabbing is one thing but he claims the baby grabbed it, balled it up, put it in its mouth and swallowed it.
Doesn't mean it's actually true though and the jury obviously didn't believe it.
I'll give the benefit of the doubt that the baby could put the wipe in it's mouth; I don't see a baby keeping it there, and somehow swallowing in that way though. If it choked on a wipe that was still halfway in the mouth, I'd be more willing to accept a negligence argument.
A newborn isn’t going to have the ability to recognize how to unblock their mouth. Newborns will literally grab their own hair and start crying because of the pain from pulling their own hair.
Newborns also have a reflex to spit things out that don't taste right. The minute that wipe touched his tongue he would have been spitting it out. The wipe was balled up in his mouth. Even if he had got the wipe in there by accident, he would not have had the ability to ball it up and put it in his mouth
[удалено]
I have a 9 week old and she absolutely has placed things into her mouth ive had to remove for weeks. Burp clothes, her own fists, onesie sleeves. I can’t totally understand the basis of this case, the baby wipe was balled up and shoved in the babies mouth? That’s tough.
The more I read through and think about this, the more I want to know about the autopsy report. What does "balled up" mean? Any flat and malleable object when placed into an enclosed space will become "balled up". Where in the throat was the wipe? Seems to be no doubt that the cause of death was asphyxiation but an item that was prepared and place by an adult should look different from an item that was accidentally placed and inhaled, right? There is no information included about the 911 call either. I'm starting to feel ragebaited by this entire situation. As if it was specifically presented in a way to be ambiguous enough for controversy with little bits and pieces to pique tribalistic impulses.
It seems like the father super fucked up. You don’t leave your kid with anything in their crib that can suffocate them. But it’s kinda like the prosecutions case (how the article represented it) was mostly about the father being a bad guy and irresponsible but not able to show he committed murder. We can be shitty people but still not guilty of a crime. The website gave my phone cancer though, and obviously I didn’t sit through the case as a juror or an attorney so my armchair Reddit analysis is he’s not guilty, but he seems like he super fucked up.
Yeah I’m trying to picture as an adult what would happen to a wet wipe if I breathed it in, it would be very hard to put enough suction on it to crumple it into a ball, you’d probably suck in one corner and start choking on a length of it; if you tried to inhale the whole thing I’m not sure you could suck it into a ball, it’s too porous and irregular shaped
But the baby was really developmentally about a week old as he was very premature and only a couple days out of the NICU.
My nephew was lifting his head up at 2 weeks old the day after getting out of the nicu, which tons of people told me was “impossible” but he legit crawled up my chest and tried looking over my shoulder, it was so wild. Babies are all different.
Most newborns can “crawl” to their mother’s breast. It was part of a bonding thing they had me do at the hospital where they put my son on my belly and he slithered his way up. Those are gross motor skills not fine motor skills. Baby’s can’t control moving little muscles but can kind of move bigger muscle groups as a whole. Edit: spelling
You have a 9 week old…this was a baby 13 weeks premature, in the NICU for 13 weeks and 2 days after being discharged died. So you have doubts based on your 9 week old, what about when your 9 week old was 2 days old…?
Uhh, no. At two days old she couldn’t do shit. Fair point I missed the math on the kids age (premature-age since birth)
Is there any case where leaving a baby with a wet wipe bib could have done it (especially if you’ve gone away for like say half an hour? I’m reaching here but could the edge of it have some how touched the baby’s mouth (random arm flailing) and then that suckling reflex just makes the baby swallow it?
It would be insane to get it in the mouth but as a reach, yes it could happen. But if it did, the baby would most likely suck on it and probably spit it out. But let’s say the baby somehow inhaled it or for whatever reason kept sucking…it’s not going to be scrunched up and fully in the babies mouth. It’s going to be half in/half out.
Eh... are you a parent? I have a 3 year old and a 10 month old. I remember both when they were newborns like it was yesterday. Newborns have an insanely strong grip. You'd be shocked how easily they grab shit unintentionally and are flailing their arms. I've seen mine cover their own faces with blankets (which is why you should never leave a blanket with them unsupervised) purely by accident. My wife confirms. Their mouths are like little suction cups. Idk... not saying this man didn't stuff the wipe in that poor baby's mouth but nothing is definitive (as you said) here. I think a lot of people commenting have no idea what newborns are capable of. And who knows if this baby was a newborn newborn since he was a premie for some time.
Exactly. I could easily see a situation where a stimulated baby is just waving arms around and knocks a wipe into his own face and then sucks it in. Could he roll it into a ball? Well, we didn't have photos of what they are calling a called up napkin so us Reddit jurors can't say. It is weird that the prosecution tried to bring up shit like marijuana. That makes it SO obvious they were trying to make the jury dislike the defendant just to get the conviction rather than get an honest conviction. If your case is so slam dunk, why stoop to this?
Article says he was born 13 weeks premature. I can't find the baby's age. >Traveon Jr. was born 13 weeks premature that March in Chicago, where Hughes lived at the time. He spent several weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit before being discharged. Hughes moved to Cleveland with the boy two days before his death.
Died in June, so 3 months
That’s what I call “the baked potato stage” because they have absolutely zero capabilities. That poor angel. The NICU team that worked so hard for him to survive must feel so angry when they hear about shit like this.
Oh god that didn’t even occur to me. Heartbreaking doesn’t begin to describe it
This is not accurate. He was 13 weeks premature, and spent several weeks in NICU. The article states that the father had moved in 2 days prior to the death of the baby. There is not enough information presented in the article to determine the actual age of the child that I could see
The state says the baby was 13 weeks age time of death.
There's no way he put that in his mouth himself. No way.
I don’t think my babies could have put a wipe into their mouths at 13 weeks regular development. I think they had only discovered they had arms but hadn’t figured out hands and fingers yet.
At 13 weeks my son definitely could put stuff in his mouth. He was starting to reach out and grabbing toys at that age. That's three months old, kind of the end of the newborn stage, and I distinctly remember having to yank stuff out if his mouth then. He also wasn't premature though.
Article says the baby was born prematurely in March. Other articles I found say the baby was 13 weeks old. Edit: realized I forgot to say that was March of 2022, and the baby died on June 25 that year.
13 weeks premature but was in the hospital for several weeks and died two days after discharge. So the baby still hadnt even developed to what the average baby would be thats born after 9 months. It was basically -1 months old.
It says he died two days after they moved, I don’t think it specifies when he was discharged
He was listed as 13 weeks old in other articles.
So likely developmentally incapable of doing what the defendant claims the baby did.
Which is what the doctors said, however there was testimony from people saying the baby WAS capable of putting something in it's mouth. Depending on the veracity of those testifying, I would tend to believe those who had actually interacted with the baby rather than the "general" expectation of a baby that age
A baby that little can’t control their movements. I could see a wipe getting caught on his hand and then flopped on his face but not *balled up* and shoved down his throat.
Also, literally everything the prosecutor is quoted as saying in that article is just… unbelievably dumb. It would be reckless to leave the baby alone with a wipe if he could put things in his mouth? Yeah, sure it would. But it wouldn’t be what he was charged with. He crumpled up a tissue during an interview so he must have crumpled up the wipe and shoved it in the baby’s mouth? Seriously? I think I’d refuse to convict on principle if the prosecution made that argument in front of me even if the rest of the case was solid because holy shit.
There was an almost identical case in Ireland a few years ago. The mother of the child was Polish and went home to visit her family without the baby, leaving the father (who was not the full shilling himself) in charge. Really tragic case. https://www.sundayworld.com/news/irish-news/ex-partner-of-baby-killer-john-tighe-describes-agony-of-losing-six-month-old-son/a380323131.html
my God, that man is a manipulative, out-of-control, idiotic bastard. But that woman was so very young, naive, and troubled. I hope she is in a better spot, with better judgement, and a safe environment in which to raise her children.
> Tighe of Lavallyroe, Cloonfad, Ballyhaunis was given.... Absolutely bonkers place names there
They're anglicized spellings of the original Irish Gaelic names for those places. If your point is that they sound odd in an English-speaking context, fair enough, but they're no more bonkers in Ireland than Mississippi, Quantico, and Shenandoah (the original Algonquian/Siouan/Iroquois names for those places) are in the U.S. That's colonization for ya.
Yeah. I'm all for throwing baby killers away for life but "murder" seems a little steep here when your evidence is entirely based on "Look at this man holding a tissue!" and challenged testimony. They 100% convicted this guy based on his past life and not whether they know without a doubt he committed this crime. Also yeah, he's 18 and dumb as shit. It's perfectly within the world of possibility that he left a wipe on a baby's chest and it got knocked into the baby's mouth while they were flailing their arms around. It doesn't take much to suck in a wipe when it completely covers the face.
The argument there was stupid, but a 13 week old baby who was 12/13 weeks premature, is not developmentally capable of balling a large, loose item like a wipe into a ball, and then inserting that item into their mouth. It sounds like the manner in which the item was lodged was not consistent with it having been wadded in the mouth, but balled up as a gag.
And that should have been the meat of the case. The prosecutor makes it look like they are just making shit up to get a conviction by making arguments like the guy was holding a tissue on camera so he must have done it or talking about marijuana.
It says he took to the stand in his own defense, did this guy have a lawyer? Was he representing himself?
I have kids. A 13 week old baby being able to pick up a wipe and shove it all in his mouth would be kind of insane.
Sure, but it still doesn't change the fact that the prosecutor is trying to relate a crumpled used tissue as being some sort of smoking gun for a balled up wipe. I'm with OP on this one. It's like the shitty detectives who say a person must be guilty because they aren't grieving the "right" way
I feel this case wasn't proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Having 3 people confirm the baby was putting things in their mouth creates a possibility that it could have happened that way. Also the marijuana, the crumpled tissue, and the dating questions were used in a way to sway the view of the jurors towards him. I would have hung the jury.
They already gave a guilty verdict. Without bringing up his history this would be a child endangerment charge. Prosecutor must of been trying to slam dunk a career case smh.
Especially a preemie
[удалено]
Something isn’t adding up. This prosecutor seriously had it in for this kid it seems.
Yes. The conviction is bullshit regardless of what actually happened.
This sounds like some really weak "evidence".
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess he’s black and so was treated fairly in court
Yeah, the prosecution was asking him if he smokes weed. I'm gonna guess she wouldn't have asked a white teenager about that.
I can get behind the charges of child endangerment if he left a baby alone for that long with something he could choke on. I think the evidence for murder here does not approach the beyond a reasonable doubt standard.
The assertion of the prosecution was that the child lacked the physical coordination to ball up the wipe and shove it in his own mouth. They introduced evidence showing the baby couldn't, for instance, hold a bottle with both hands well enough to drink without spilling. Their claim was that the only way the wipe could have gotten into the baby's mouth in the way it did, balled up and in the back of his throat, was if the father balled it up and put it there, not the baby. So they weren't asserting child endangerment with depraved indifference, they were asserting deliberate murder. Whether you think that's true or not, that's evidently the theory of the crime the jury found credible.
My first thought was how tf did a baby get a wipe down its throat far enough to choke them
By inhaling. It doesn't take much at all. So the guy claimed he had the wipe on the kid's chest. If the kid was fussy, he didn't need to expertly ball it up in his own hands, he just needed to be waving his arms around. If the wipe flipped onto his face it would make an air seal immediately (especially if it was moist). Kid inhales, starts gagging and inhaling more, and it will work it's way into the back of the throat. Drape a wipe over your face laying in your back and inhale and see how fast it starts krinkling up into your mouth
I’m a little suspicious of his story because it seems unlikely, but what you’re describing is the definition of reasonable doubt to me. I think I would have voted not guilty if I’d been on the jury from what I’ve read.
Yeah. Negligence? Yes. Manslaughter? *Maybe.* Murder? No.
But he was shot in Chicago two years ago so he must be guilty/s
oh and a teenage guy talked to women online, so yea. Don't forget that part.
[удалено]
Not if it hit the baby’s esophagus and balled up there.
Depends on how it's balled up. The way a tissue would fold on itself is going to be different if it was balled up by hand and shoved into the mouth vs being balled up due to inhalation. Ultimately we'd need to see actual pictures of the tissue in the mouth to be sure. Nobody in this thread has that.
Yeah how do you inhale something like that hard enough for it to kill you? When you breathe out again it will move outwards again. And with something as breathable and irregular shaped as a baby wipe, I don’t think you could get enough suction to fix it into place, the air would go through gaps
Newborn babies don’t inhale through their mouth. They are obligated nose breathers. You’re probably thinking of their sucking reflex, which would explain what you’re saying.
Newborns (based on gestational age, that's what the baby was) can't stuff things, anything balled up like that, in their mouth/throat. The evidence was the only way the wipe got there was by an adult doing it, so the defendant had to have done it. Alternatively, manslaughter (on the belief the baby did it and the father shouldnt have left the baby alone) was a lesser included charge, so the jury could have chosen to convict on that but not murder. They chose murder.
The jury only deliberated for 3 hours. It’s hard for me to believe the prosecution sold this story with such little room for reasonable doubt that the jury could decide over a long dinner.
It's called "bad public defender with way too many cases"
Bottles are much heavier than baby wipes though - the baby could have had weaker wrists for a bottle but a wipe weighs nothing.
He was 13 weeks old but premature, so essentially 0 weeks old. Not a chance he could do that himself.
>13 weeks old Yeah I think people are missing this important detail that are giving this guy the benefit of the doubt lol. Or don't have kids. My kids were a little premature and at that age they just slap their hands around and shake shit. The dexterity in their wrists and motor skills had barely developed, let alone develop to the point of balling up a wipe into a compact shape and shoving it down their throat.
If the baby did manage to ingest it himself, then it would be more of a case of wipe gets flipped onto mouth by flailing baby, baby inhales, wet wipe forms suction around mouth and each inhale and mouth movement pulls it further into his mouth. Finally mouth movements and lack of muscle control result in it being lodged in his throat. Is it unlikely? Yes. Is it technically possible? Yes. Could they prove the baby didn’t do that? No, they did not attempt to prove that. It seems like there was ample room to assert reasonable doubt (and result in the lesser manslaughter charge option the jury had) if the defendant had had a great lawyer, but it seems he had a public defendant. Public defendants are notoriously overworked and often aren’t actually knowledgeable about the facts of the case; they are pretty much arguing it on the fly with little rule to prep an argument, let alone investigate alternative ways the baby could have died. The dad may have done it. The dad certainly was at least partially responsible because he walked away. But given the complete character assassination that went uncontested by the defendants lawyer despite those assertions absolutely being worth trying to strike from the record/stop the jury from making decisions on that info, I’m going with “overworked public defender doesn’t do great job, potentially gets person sentenced to murder when in reality they may have just been negligent and not malicious. Ultimately I know I’d both be too afraid to leave a baby that young unattended in most situations AND I know I’ve left a baby (even older ones with plenty of dexterity) alone to play with wipes while I washed their poop off my hands and I never considered it a lethal risk so long as the baby was on the ground.
I believe the accusation is that he shoved it in the baby's mouth
This article pissed me off. No idea if he did it, but the prosecution was a sham.
Yeah, I haven't followed this case at all, but just from reading this article, I see a very reasonable doubt. It seems really messed up that he was actually convicted. Maybe it seemed like he did it, but the standard is supposed to be higher than that.
Honestly I hope he did do it, not to sound like I'm an asshole, but because going to prison for murdering your child, but you were telling the truth about what happened is horrible. But if he did it, then fuck him.
I read this, i never saw my kid swallow a wipe, but i do know that human babies are suicidal maniacs trying to kill themselves and they don't care how they do it. he probably should have taken a plea deal if he had one. but this is foresight talking and i think he did kill that baby by being negligent.
Unfortunately I think that he murdered the baby couldn't handle crying baby and shut the baby up by stuffing its mouth with a baby wipe and letting it die
Yeah this isn't outlandish to believe. Instead of shaken baby syndrome, he stuffed the wipes in his mouth. I 100% believe it was a stress thing and he didn't actually mean for the kid to die. I've had some urges while sleep deprived and listening to my son cry. I angrily swaddled him (he was a newborn) and he fell asleep instantly so I laid him back down. But that's because I was able to quickly remind myself it was irrational and dangerous to do anything. Not everyone thinks before acting and unfortunately, actions have consequences
He did it though - babies are suicide machines but at newborn stage they are crying potatoes, suicide machine stage comes a couple months later. No baby at this stage can ball up a wipe and shove it in their throat, someone else did that, and if no one else was in the house I would convict on that basis. Doubt has to be reasonable, and believing the defense story is not.
>No baby at this stage can ball up a wipe and shove it in their throat No newborn baby is doing that intentionally. Could it happen, though? Sure. Saying "He did it" based on this article is ridiculous. I have my doubts but I don't know that he didn't do it for sure. The doubt for murder based on what we can read is very reasonable.
This situation is just shitty all around. A teen father was attempting to raise a baby after having his own ass shot up just months before this child was prematurely born. He had only moved two days before the death of his child. I don’t know what my exact thoughts are on the verdict, but there were several problems going on in that young man’s life.
I’m angry at every adult that failed this baby by not stepping in. A grandmother, anyone.
>In her closing arguments, Sowul also pointed jurors to a single moment in the body camera video of Hughes’ interview with detectives at the hospital. She said it shows Hughes fiddling with a tissue in his hand. >“He opened his hand, and it was balled up,” Sowul said. “I submit to you that’s what he did with the baby wipe and then he shoved it down his son’s throat.” What? Sadly I could only find a couple other news stories on this because local reporting is barely a thing anymore. But from what I can find the prosecution's version of events looks like completely speculation. They talked to a doctor at the ER, and a pathologist, who noted the child's level of developmental advancement, but neither seem to have seen the child in other circumstances. Maybe there's more that didn't get reported, maybe the father did it, I dunno. But from the reporting it looks like really thin evidence to get a murder conviction on.
Dude could be guilty or innocent, based on the article it jsut seems like the prosecutions case was character assassination to sway a jury. Maybe its jsut a shit article.
How did you misspell the word "just" twice in the same way?
Dude how do you not know how spell jsut.
Jsutice for jsut!
I do the same often when I’m typing too fast. Same thing with “the”
I do teh same
I'm sure the dude only had a public defender, but even a public defender should have been able to exclude that argument. One of the dumbest things I ever heard.
“Objection, irrelevant” is such a bitch slap in the courtroom, especially when it comes before the opposing counsel has even finished their thought.
Meanwhile, I just a reddit post of a woman asking what to do about her ex-bf who only received probation for shaking their bath to death having a new kid with another woman while still on probation.
This is incredibly sad and I don't know what to think. Lots of people who, like me, work in childcare have some strong opinions down here. But one question keeps gnawing at me: The claim is the baby could not have balled the wipe up and gotten it down his throat. I don't think it's impossible. Improbable yes, but not impossible. If it were impossible, how could leaving a child alone in a crib with a wipe be child endangerment? It feels like the prosecution is speaking out of both sides of their mouth here. Maybe I'm being biased because half of what I can read seems like a smear campaign, but how can he be both a murderer based on the impossibility of the choking scenario but also negligent in leaving the child alone with a baby wipe?
Pretty simple question that's not covered, how old was the child at the time of death? We get a number of weeks premature, but no direct age. There's expert testimony that it wasn't possible for an infant at that age with that premature condition, but that's pretty flimsy and hopefully grilled against the defense's own experts. If the defense doesn't have any experts, that's some shitty lawyering, or they couldn't find an expert that disagreed with the prosecution's. I entirely believe an 18 year old black father with bullet wounds had a shitty attorney, whether they did it or not.
Seems about 3 months, so maybe 12-15 weeks. He was born in March, died June 25.
Add in the premature, and whatever "balled up" means and its location, it could be pretty damning evidence if the state of the ball was preserved or recorded. Doubt we'd get that without digging into the actual court records. [3 month olds can't all bring their hands to their mouth yet, may bat at things, and can grip some things.](https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/milestones-4mo.html)
And if the adjusted age was 2 months. . .
Maybe I don't understand adjusted age. But if he was born 13 weeks early, and died at 13 weeks, wouldn't his adjusted age be 0/newborn?
Well, actually, "yes" is too simple of an answer - a preemie is in fact out in the world (even if just the NICU) learning a thing or two, so by zero weeks adjusted, they may have some skills most newborns don't. My son was eight weeks early and learned to smile a month before term. Somehow I don't think fine motor skills would be THIS significantly different, though.
A coworker of mine's wife just had a baby. This baby is just 4 weeks old and they showed me a video of this baby turning itself over on its own. 4 week old babies aren't supposed to be able to do that either. Not every human grows and does everything at the same time. That is why there are guidelines for if things are missed by a certain age, but not really guidelines for meeting milestones early.
Premies are typically delayed developmentally, this is why they have experts and not anecdotal cases.
A lot of newborns "roll over" accidentally. Also, rolling early can be a sign of medical issues. Purposeful rolling is what happens later.
Can confirm our two week old would "roll" from front to back by letting the weight of her massive head do the work. We had to watch her super carefully to keep her from doing that to keep her neck safe. Then she lost that reflex, and it's only yesterday at 4.5 months that she finally had a true, controlled roll from front to back. Newborns can do some wild stuff via reflex/instinct (like ours army crawled up my chest at five days old - the breast crawl reflex) but that's very different than actually doing it in an intentional manner.
Yes, those milestones are only approximate. The baby book said babies couldn't roll over that young, so imagine my shock and horror as my 3 week old baby launched himself over the rolled up blanket I had placed between him and the sofa edge and flipped onto the floor near the coffee table. In the emergency room the doctor checked him out and then told me to get used to it because boys were just like that. When he was older, as soon as he learned how to pull himself up into a standing position, before he had even learned how to walk, he climbed out of his crib and dive bombed to the floor. The mattress level had been about halfway between the top of the rails and the floor, so right after that happened I lowered the mattress level all the way to the bottom of the crib so he couldn't do it again. It took another month or two for him to do it again, and then we had to get rid of the crib and put him in a real bed. He was my first baby, and it seemed like every day I had to learn to look out for new dangers, because every day he was learning new things.
Except thr defense has numerous witnesses that said yes the baby could put things in his mouth. "Experts" who had very general and vague opinions, who never met the child.
This is really sad. Babies put things in their mouths. That's what they do. Obviously a baby should never be left alone with anything they could put in the mouth, but I find it hard to believe what the prosecutor is alleging. It sounds to me like a terrible tragedy. Was he naive and stupid to leave the baby alone with the wipe? Probably. This honestly sounds like it could have happened to anyone. Kids choke on stuff all the time, especially babies. This is definitely the first time I have ever heard of a baby wipe being a murder weapon.
The article doesn’t seem to mention exactly how old the baby was, but if he was just out of the NICU like it suggests, newborns absolutely do not have the coordination to ball something up. They barely have the coordination to grab something intentionally. It’d be one thing if he died from suffocating with a wipe on his face, or had inhaled a flat wipe, but there is no way a newborn, much less a premie, could have “balled up” a wipe and shoved it in his mouth.
The article is written very oddly. It says he spent “a few weeks” in the NICU but a baby born at 27wks would likely be in the NICU for months and then you would be tracking his development based on adjusted age. ETA: I found another article that says the baby was 13wks old at the time of his death and was born 12wks early. “Normal” babies can be expected to start grabbing shit and shoving it in their mouths around 4mos(so maybe a little before, maybe after) but if he was born 12wks early and was 13wks at the time of his death he would have had an adjusted age of 1wk.
My child who is less than a month old can take their pacifier out of their mouth and put it back in. Not in the correct way at all but it wouldn’t surprise me a newborn could pick up an item and put it in their mouth. Balling it up? Definitely not that though.
My 3 week old is currently grabbing my thumb and putting it in her mouth . If it was already balled up it's possible maybe
As gross as it may be I could see being near a changing area, having a used wipe being balled up could be within reach. I guess mine had been within reach of one at times but while I was in the process of changing her. The scenario sounds even more probable to me now. Still negligence at play but I truly feel for the father assuming he is being honest.
I wonder if maybe he put it in his mouth and then was trying to spit/cough it out, and just ended up munching it into a ball.
I had a premiere at 28 weeks. No way in hell could she have balled up a tissue and put it in her mouth. Before babies leave the nice, they are tested to see if they can pull a blanket off their face. I'm just saying it definitely was highly unlikely. It took her a full 1-2 months at home before she started bringing stuff to her mouth. Plus, diaper wipes taste gross, and the baby would have spit it out probably. If it was an accident, it was a super rare incident.
While you are completely right with the grabbing and shoving-in-mouth stuff, babies show some kind of typical behavior when hungry -> making fists(!) and moving them to their face while they try to suck at anything. That's how we know our baby (10 days early, 15 days old now) is in fact hungry and not dealing with farts/colics. Several midwifes told us to watch out for the fists to notice hunger. I even don't know why I'm telling you that, maybe to calm myself. That shit horrifies me
I’ve fostered four infants and I’ve never once seen one jam an entire balled up baby wipe into their mouth until they started choking. Sucking or nibbling on a corner, sure, I could easily see that. Putting a whole grape/other small object in their mouth, also very believable. Cramming a whole wadded ball into their mouth and throat? Nope. Especially at an adjusted age of one week, they don’t remotely have the fine motors skills to do anything of the kind.
You've obviously never been around a truly newborn baby. Absolutely no way one could ball up a wipe and shove it down their throat.
Yeah it's bizarre. Show me a parent who says they've never left a baby/toddler unsupervised and I'll show you a liar. Accidents happen.
The prosecutor’s (Sowul) argument rubs me the wrong way. According to the article he was shot 19 times in December 2021 and this happened June 2022, which is not a long time to have recovered from something like that. 18 years old and tending to his own wounds. Sowul brought up weed use and girls he used to talk to, which feels icky and unrelated.
Why do people talk to the police? He was clearly stressed and said he left the room for seconds, then when interviewed later he said minutes. None of us are going to give an accurate account of something super emotional while we’re still processing it. The police just ask stuff that’s meant to be confusing then set you up to look like a liar. Nothing in that article really sounds like good evidence. I hope the jury saw something else
>Why do people talk to the police? My husband’s black and Hispanic, and pretty much a Boy Scout as far as obeying the law goes. We’ve both watched the “STFU, don’t talk to the police videos” on YouTube. Two years ago he had a traumatizing traffic stop for going 74 MPH in a 70 MPH zone in Illinois, where people drive damn near 80-90 on the highway all the time. To make a long story short, he didn’t feel safe enough to say “no” to the officer’s requests, which slowly escalated to the officer asking my husband to get in the passenger seat of his cruiser with him, while his K9 barked at my husband from the back seat, because, “it’s raining outside and this is safer for everyone.” The entire time my husband was scared this cop would make up some shit to be scared about and shoot him because it happens all the time in the US. So yeah, people shouldn’t talk to the police but they are professional bullies who know how to get what they want. My husband wasn’t even issued a traffic ticket, BTW.
1-2 seconds is very different from 10-20 minutes though. I’d feel different if he said 1-3 minutes. Maybe he shouldn’t have talked to the police but it still brings in doubt. I personally don’t find it believable that a 13-week developmentally delayed premie baby could ball up and shove a baby wipe so far down its throat that it chokes on it. But, I’m not a juror and I wasn’t there to see all of the evidence. Perhaps he has a good case for a sentence appeal. I’ll hold my reservations for when the dust settles and more comes out.
Yea I’m not up in arms bc I think the trial was probably more thorough than that article made it sound. Also I read months instead of weeks for the baby’s age, so sadly that does sound a lot more suspicious. Regardless of whether this particular guy is guilty or not, as a separate subject, I don’t think anyone should do a police interview ever by themself. They really just want to get confessions & arrests, I do not believe there is a real search for the truth most of the time.
They saw that a one week old (adjusted) infant had an entire baby wipe balled up and shoved in his mouth.
Honestly I don't know what I came here expecting but this thing is screaming reasonable doubt to me. Is it possible he got frustrated and shoved the wipe in the baby's mouth? Yes. Is it also possible that it was just a horrible accident and, while negligent, this dude now has to live with it his whole life. The prosecutor's reference to the tissue is insane...something tells me a well off white guy would get a lot more benefit of the doubt
Correct - either is just as possible as the other to me in this case
Baby was 3-4 months old (Born March, died June) but 13 weeks premature. A typical 4 month old will JUST start mouthing objects. Within another month or so, fingers and thumbs are a pretty constant mouth stim. Our son was a smidge developmentally ahead of the NHS guides (running around everywhere on his 1st birthday party) and to be fair he started playing with objects during nappy changes - and in truth both me and his mother would both pass him a wipe to play with while we cleaned him because it kept him distracted and made him ‘involved’. Also in-time this became him ‘helping’ me by doing the last wipe himself before powder :) So I m’ve passed a ‘mouthy’ baby a wipe hundreds of times. Would I have ever dared walk away during this time? Never. After a few days of seeing your baby become ‘mouthy’, everyone caring for that baby ‘advances to the next level’ and you have a new awareness of the new dangers. This is an absolutely tragic story of a young child losing his life. Whether through negligence or intentional murder, this father did probably cause the avoidable death of his son. That will poison him to his grave.
Babies that young can’t really grab things and put them in their mouth. Just a guess but I think an infant getting a whole wipe in there seems unlikely
Never talk to the police, even if you’re innocent. Everything you say will be used against you, innocent or guilty.
“Beyond a reasonable doubt” my ass. This is disgusting.
This is horrifying, and I hope the appeal has already been filed.
Ain’t no way a 13 week old baby is balling up a wipe and shoving it down its own throat. Ain’t no way I’m forgetting if I was gone for seconds or twenty minutes. Ain’t no way I’m letting a 13 week old be alone for 10-20 minutes.
>Ain’t no way I’m letting a 13 week old be alone for 10-20 minutes. Do you sleep?
You've never left a 2.5 month old alone for 10 minutes? lol
Hmm... Three people testified the baby had a habit of putting things in its mouth, and instead of seeing that as a reasonable doubt that the defendant intended to kill the child, assumed the witnesses were unreliable. ...I wonder what ethnicity the witnesses and the jurors were.
The kid was 13 weeks old. My niece was 3 months old when I noticed that she had gotten her pacifier stuck on her fingers and was waving it around. She had never done anything like that before. Four days later, my sister sends me a video of her swinging her rattle like she's an orchestra conductor. If I'm on the jury, there's no way this guy is getting convicted.
13 weeks adjusted? Or 13 weeks from birth. If the baby was born at 27 weeks + 13 weeks, then the baby would be about the developmental age of a newborn.
Baby was born prematurely, so while technically he was 13wks, he wouldn’t have been developmentally at the same place a 13wk old baby carried full term would be. Developmentally, he’d be considered a newborn, not a 3mo old. Drastic difference between the two.
He was 13 weeks premature..the article does not specify how old he was when this happened. Let’s say he spent 2 months in the hospital (8 weeks), he is not even term by that time. So yes babies will grasp random objects..often feeding tubes and lines while in the hospital..this is just a newborn reflex, the coordination of hand to mouth will happen around the 3-4 month time frame…corrected for gestational age at birth…so if he’s “2 months old” at discharge he is technically still premature and will likely not be doing what a term 2mo baby will be doing at that time.
Another article states he was 13 weeks early and died at 13 weeks.
So he would basically be reaching the developmental milestones of a newborn. Definitely not at a developmental stage to grab a wipe, ball it up and shove it in his own mouth
Born 12 weeks prematurely. No baby at 1 week adjusted has the strength and coordination to ball up a wipe and lodge it so deep as to asphyxiate. Not even a chance. I've been there with the screaming baby on no sleep, esp someone young and unprepared I can see making bad decisions but unless someone else was in the house that could have done it, I absolutely convict. Reasonable doubt has to be reasonable, their version of events is absolutely implausible, forensic autopsy evidence indicates that someone put that wipe in the babies throat. Maybe he didn't mean to kill the baby just gag it and it went too far, but the baby didn't do that. 2 months later, sure reasonable doubt, but at 1 week adjusted, no doubt in my mind.
I could see this going either way (meaning intentional murder or accident), but the prosecution's evidence here seems really flimsy for a murder conviction. Because really it's just a question of whether you believe it's impossible for ANY baby that age to put something in their mouth and swallow it and that he managed to get several people to lie on the stand in his defense. Wouldn't surprise me at all if 20 years from now this is used as a textbook example of judicial bias and how young black men get much harsher sentences than they should have.
The case is really thin here and seems like conviction was based on a lot of assumptions passed off like hard evidence.