A Pennsylvania woman has been arrested after she allegedly killed her 3-month-old son and blamed it on her toddler daughter.
Alisha Parker, 26, has been charged with criminal homicide and endangering the welfare of a child after the baby, Dai’von Means, was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Duquesne police responded to a call about an unresponsive infant just before 2 a.m. on Sunday, according to the Allegheny County Police Department. Emergency responders tried CPR and then took the little boy to the hospital.
“[Parker] called my sister Sunday and she told my sister that the baby stopped breathing,” Oprah Means, the child’s great aunt, told WTAE. “She kept saying little things like, ‘He was sick.’”
A criminal complaint said that Parker lived at the Duquense house with her two children, a cousin, and the cousin’s 18-month-old child, the station said. The cousin, identified as “WITNESS 1” in the complaint, told police that on the night before the boy’s death, they spoke with Parker on the phone and could hear the baby crying in the background.
“WITNESS 1 described this cry as an angry, hungry type cry,” the complaint said.
The witness later arrived at the home and found Parker awake and drinking tequila. Later in the night, the witness went to check on the children and did not initially find the baby. When they did, they said the child’s “ear was noticeably white.” The witness said the baby did not appear to be breathing.
At the hospital, Parker told detectives that “if there’s anything that happened out of the ordinary, my 3-year-old child did it and y’all need todo something about that.”
“She’s the last person to see him alive and she’s been doing little jealousy, little things — evaluate that girl,” she told the detectives, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said.
An autopsy revealed taht Dai’von died from blunt force trauma to the head and that his injuries were inflicted by an adult, Allegheny Police said.
“Through witness interviews, detectives learned the child’s mother, 26-year-old Alisha Parker of Duquesne, was the only adult in the home in the hours leading up to the child’s death,” police said in a statement.
