Prozakian babysitter murders child by slamming him on the floor
SSRIHater
Sitter felt depressed, jurors told
Lawyer: Myers depressed after her recent abortion
By THOMAS BEAUMONT Register Staff Writer 10/21/2000
Tifany Myers slammed Joel Vasquez to the floor of her Des Moines
apartment in January when the 21-month-old son of her friend
cried constantly.
No one disputes that.
What jurors will be asked to decide is whether Myers' chronic
depression, enhanced by her abortion days earlier, left her
momentarily unable to control herself. Myers is charged with
first-degree murder.
"She is responsible for the death of that poor little baby. She
took that baby and slammed him on the floor. She did it," Myers'
attorney William Kutmus told jurors during his opening statement
Friday morning.
Myers, 19, suffered from chronic depression, he added, which
diminishes her responsibility for Joel's death.
Kutmus said experts will testify that Myers' lacked the ability
to understand her actions the day she shook and slammed Joel
inside her east-side apartment. Testimony resumes Monday.
Joel died at Blank Children's Hospital on Jan. 21 when his
mother, Kristy Irwin of Des Moines, agreed to disconnect the boy
from life-support machines.
Prosecutors say Myers is responsible for the boy's death, which
constitutes murder.
Doctors, emergency medical staff and police who saw the boy in
the hour immediately after Myers called 911 said they knew almost
immediately Joel's injuries were intentional, not the accident
she told them about first.
"We knew this was a non-accidental injury and that Joel would
probably die from these injuries," said Dr. Charles Jennessen,
the emergency room pediatrician who treated Joel when he was
rushed to the hospital around 3 p.m. Jan. 20.
Paramedics, police and hospital staff testified that Myers told
them the boy fell off a bed. Prosecutors on Friday played the
audiotape recording of Myers' 911 call, during which she said she
was in another room when the boy fell 4 feet onto the carpeted
floor.
"I need an ambulance. The baby fell off the bed," Myers' voice
could be heard telling a dispatcher.
The boy suffered a blunt trauma to the head, which caused
bleeding and swelling inside his brain. The injury created
pressure inside Joel's head that prevented oxygen from reaching
his brain, doctors testified.
The severity of Joel's head injury, which left him brain dead
within minutes, unexplained intestinal injuries and ruptured
blood vessels around the boy's eyes defied Myers' explanation
that the boy fell when he was supposed to be napping, doctors and
emergency workers said.
Myers later told police she slammed Joel on the floor after she
became frustrated by his crying.
Kutmus said Myers, a ninth-grade dropout, was raped as an
adolescent and had an abortion at age 14.
Irwin, the child's mother, said Myers had baby-sat for the boy
for more than a month before he died. She had no reason to
believe the boy would be harmed, she testified.
Myers appeared normal in the days before Joel's death, despite
having a second abortion on Jan. 18, Irwin said. Irwin offered to
have Joel stay somewhere else while Myers recovered.
"She didn't say there was anything wrong with her to me," Irwin
said during often tearful testimony Friday. "Everything was fine.
She said everything was fine."
Meow,
The only true Eric in North Carolina
(The official defender of drug- and radiation-free Ukrainian women)
WARNING TO PARENTS: Jew-hating Austrian Nazi Peter "Guardian" Schrenk
(peter....@lion.cc) is a violent child-molesting pedophile troll.
Saskia
I'm new to this group and maybe I'll learn to ignore you like everyone else.
But please get a life asshole.
"SSRIHater" <AntiP...@Drug.Addict.Bashers> wrote in message
news:8r8375254...@Drug.Addict.Bashers...
Larry Phillips Jr.
AntiP...@Drug.Addict.Bashers says...
Sounds like the problem was that she was not being treated, not Prozac
