WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT – She is scheduled to face trial next month and last week, the grand jury added an additional charge of involuntary manslaughter to the case
A mum is due to stand trial after she allegedly ‘accidentally killed her daughter by placing her in an oven’, mistaking it for a crib.
Mariah Thomas, 26, was initially charged with endangering the welfare of a child after one-month-old Za’Riah Mae was discovered dead with ‘burn wounds.’
The police were first called to the Kansas City home in Missouri where the infant was found not breathing. Officers arrived to find the baby covered in burns a day after mum Thomas celebrated her birthday.
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She is scheduled to face trial next month and last week, the grand jury added an additional charge of involuntary manslaughter to the case, according to the superseding indictment.
According to an arrest warrant at the time, the baby’s clothes were blackened and burnt into her nappy, with reports of her home smelling of smoke. Za’Riah’s grandfather told officers he had received a call from the mum around 1pm on Friday, February 9, in which she told him “something was wrong with the baby” and asked him to return home.
He told police he had returned to the home where he could smell smoke before finding the one-month-old child dead in her crib. He allegedly told police that Thomas had told him she “accidentally” put her in the oven, according to court documents, reports the Mirror US.
The distraught mother allegedly confessed: “I thought I put [the girl] in her crib and I accidentally put her in the oven.”
When police arrived at the scene, they reportedly discovered Za-Riah in a car seat with “apparent thermal injuries on various parts of her body,” with a scorched baby blanket also found and seized as evidence, say officials. Grief-stricken friends have suggested that Thomas’ mental health struggles may have contributed to the horrifying event. A heartbroken pal recalled Za’Riah as a “very bubbly” tot who was “smiling all the time”.
After Thomas’ arrest, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker released a statement lamenting the gruesome nature of the incident: “We acknowledge the gruesome nature of this tragedy and our hearts are weighted by the loss of this precious life. We trust the criminal justice system to respond appropriately to these awful circumstances.”
The mum was taken into custody but exercised her Fifth Amendment, choosing to remain silent. Nonetheless, consent was given for her blood to be drawn, and her phone data was turned over to law enforcement.
