Wichita stepmom gets probation after toddler hospitalized with ‘abusive head trauma’
A 31-year-old Wichita woman will spend three years on probation for abusing two young children in 2019. Court records say she hit a toddler so hard that the girl’s arms stiffened and she vomited before losing consciousness.
The children were 2 and 4 years old at the time they were harmed. Prosecutors charged the woman, previously identified by Wichita police as their stepmom, and her husband, who is the children’s father, in connection with the abuse, Sedgwick County District Court records show.
The 2-year-old girl suffered injuries serious enough that she became unresponsive and required hospital care on Feb. 19, 2019. A doctor who treated her diagnosed her with “abusive head trauma” that left her with brain bleeds and a “severely altered mental status,” old scars on her buttocks, arm stiffness indicative of head trauma and hypothermia that may have been caused by brain injuries, court records show.
The girl also had been poorly cared for. Lice infested her hair and she had lousy hygiene when she was admitted into the hospital, according to a probable cause affidavit released by a Sedgwick County judge last fall.
The Eagle is not naming the woman or her husband to protect the children’s identities. Court records say they initially lied and said they didn’t know how the 2-year-old had been harmed.
But the woman eventually admitted to a Wichita police detective in an interview that she had hit the 2-year-old’s mouth and the side of her head because the girl had resisted a nap and called her a curse word, the affidavit says.
The woman also admitted that she had been using methamphetamine after having a stillborn baby in November 2018 and that she and her husband had smoked marijuana in the days before she beat the toddler, the affidavit says.
The woman told authorities she tried to put the 2-year-old girl down in bed after striking her on Feb. 19, 2019, but the girl’s arms “were stiff and sticking straight up into the air,” the affidavit says. She tried but couldn’t push the girl’s arms down.
The 2-year-old then started vomiting and became unresponsive, according to the affidavit.
The 4-year-old also had signs of physical abuse. When she was asked by hospital staff how she got a bruised ear, the child replied, “my mom smacked me,” the affidavit says.
The 4-year-old had a number of bruises, including on her buttocks, hips, leg, by her nose, on her back, on her cheek and on an arm. She also had scratches on her lip and neck, the affidavit says.
Authorities eventually arrested both the woman and her husband. Prosecutors charged the woman with one count of child abuse connected to the 2-year-old’s injuries and one count of misdemeanor battery connected to harm suffered by the 4-year-old.
Last month, the woman changed a previous not-guilty plea to guilty, court records show.
District Judge David Dahl on Monday gave the woman a 38-month prison sentence, immediately suspended it and placed her on probation for three years, according to Dan Dillon, a spokesman for the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office. The sentence follows recommendations from attorneys who negotiated her plea deal.
If she violates the terms of her probation, she could be forced to serve the prison sentence, Dillon said by email.
Her husband was originally charged with two felony counts of interfering with law enforcement for lying to police about what had happened and for telling his wife in a jail phone call that he had cleared evidence of their drug use out of the house. He pleaded guilty in 2019 to two misdemeanor counts of unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia and received a year of probation, which he completed, according to court records.
