A Utah man pleaded guilty to killing his 1-month-old son after the baby’s cries woke him up.
Matthew Daniel Graves, 24, pleaded guilty to aggravated murder as part of a plea agreement to try to avoid the death penalty, reported KSL. As part of the agreement, two other charges, drug possession and allowing a child to be exposed to controlled substances, were dropped.
Investigators said Graves punched his son, Brayden, repeatedly in September 2017 because the child was crying and it made him angry.
Graves told police officers that he knew the infant was having difficulty after being punched but went back to sleep and drove another child to day care before seeking help for the baby, reported Deseret News. Then, he called 911.
The baby was rushed to Ogden Regional Medical Center before being airlifted to Primary Children’s Hospital. Doctors who examined the baby said Brayden had “significant brain trauma,” skull fractures, and separated vertebrae in the head and neck, and the baby was soon pronounced dead.
Investigators said the death was a homicide and charged Graves with murder.
Graves “admitted that he had gotten angry because the infant was crying and had punched him repeatedly in the head,” according to charging documents.
Police officers searched the defendant’s house and car and found drugs. Court records showed that he has prior convictions of possession of a firearm by a restricted person and drug possession.
Graves is scheduled to be sentenced on March 5.
Death of 1-Year-Old Girl Leads to Arrest
An Oklahoma mother was arrested after her 1-year-old daughter died.
The baby was struggling to breathe, Tiffani Paul told 911 dispatchers when she called on Feb. 18. Paul had twins and told police officers later that the girl was the more difficult of the pair because she cried the most while describing the male twin as an “easy” baby who didn’t cry, according to an affidavit obtained by the Tulsa World.
Paul originally told officers that the baby slipped in the bathtub and hit her head on a towel rack. She said that the girl fell face first on a toy fire truck a few days later.
But officers said the described events weren’t consistent with the girl’s severe head injuries, as one pediatrician wrote the injuries were consistent with something “violently striking [the baby’s] head,” leading to a second interview with Paul, during which she changed her story and said she dropped the baby down five or six steps.
Later, she said that she actually told police that she threw the girl into a wall weeks before her daughter died.
When asked why she did that, she responded: “I don’t know. I’m just tired,” reported News 6.
The little girl was treated in a hospital but died on Feb. 19.
Paul was arrested at 10 p.m. on Feb. 20 and was being held in lieu of $550,000 in bond.
Child Abuse
According to a report published by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (pdf), approximately 3.5 million children nationwide in 2016 were the subjects of at least one maltreatment report to authorities.
“Child abuse is one of the nation’s most serious concerns,” the authors of the report wrote in the introduction. About 17 percent of those reports were substantiated; the department said that there were an estimated 676,000 victims of child abuse and neglect, or 9.1 victims per 1,000 children.
Children in their first year of life had the highest rate of victimization at 24.8 per 1,000 children of the same age in the national population.
About three-quarters of the cases were neglect while about 18 percent were physical abuse. Some children suffered from multiple forms of maltreatment. Of the perpetrators of the abuse, more than four-fifths were between the ages of 18 and 44 and more than half were women.
If you suspect a child is being abused or neglected, contact your local child protective services office or law enforcement agency so officials can investigate and assess the situation. Most states have a number to call to report abuse or neglect.
To find out where to call, consult the State Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Numbers website. The Childhelp organization can also provide crisis assistance and other counseling and referral services. Contact them at 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453).
“Every year more than 3.6 million referrals are made to child protection agencies involving more than 6.6 million children (a referral can include multiple children),” according to Childhelp.