Days after dad’s plea, Wichita mom admits to murdering toddler son and abusing baby
Days after a Wichita father pleaded guilty to murdering his 2-year-old son in 2019, the boy’s mother also admitted fault.
Brandi Marchant, 26, on Wednesday pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping charges in the April 2019 starvation and dehydration death of her toddler, Zaiden Javonovich. She also pleaded guilty to one count of child abuse connected to the treatment of her then 4-month-old baby, who police found in dire health when they discovered Zaiden dead in his crib on April 11, 2019.
Zaiden’s father, 31-year-old Patrick Javonovich, pleaded guilty to the same charges on July 21, court records show.
In an email confirming the pleas, a spokeswoman for the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday that each could go to prison for 322 months — more than 26 years — for the crimes. Their sentencing dates have not been set yet, Kristin Gill said.
The pleas come more than three years after Wichita police went to the couple’s south Wichita trailer home in response to a neighbor’s complaint about them fighting and found Zaiden dead and his infant brother in such poor health that he couldn’t regulate his body temperature or use his neck muscles to support his head.
Both boys were severely underweight from not being fed enough, authorities have said.
At 2 years old, Zaiden weighed less than 15 pounds, about half that of other children his age. He was 31 inches tall.
The baby weighed only eight pounds, authorities have said.
When police found Zaiden’s body, he was lying face down tightly swaddled in a blanket and tied up in a pair of long-sleeved pajamas with the sleeves knotted near his throat, according to a probable cause affidavit released by the court. Marchant told police she bound her son like that to keep him from crawling out of his crib, the document says.
An autopsy performed on the child determined he died from starvation and dehydration and also of possible asphyxia.
Marchant told police she put Zaiden in bed on the evening of April 10, 2019, and slept through the next day without checking on him or his infant brother, the affidavit says.
Javonovich didn’t check on the children, either, after arriving home from work, according to the document.
The boys were discovered after one of the parents mentioned having children to police questioning them about the domestic violence call. An officer went into the couple’s trailer, located in the 4500 block of South Hydraulic, after the conversation.
Javonovich, who is Zaiden’s biological father but not the baby’s, and Marchant told authorities they had been feeding the children regularly and didn’t know that Zaiden had died, according to court records.
They’ve been in jail since shortly after police found the children and remained there Wednesday, awaiting sentencing, an online log of inmates shows.
