A Pennsylvania mother is behind bars after she allegedly admitted to smothering her 9-month-old son and staging the child’s crib to make it appear he’d somehow gotten stuck.
Officers responded to an Indiana Borough home on January 6 on a call about an unresponsive infant, WJAC reported. Police said the child had no pulse and wasn’t breathing, but regained a pulse at a local hospital. He was transferred to UPMC Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he died five days later.
According to an affidavit, the boy’s mother, 21-year-old Patricial Hullenbaugh, initially told officers that she had put her son down for a nap but when she returned an hour later, he was “hanging” partially outside the crib, face down on the mattress. She said she called for help from the boy’s father, who instructed her to call 911 as he began CPR.
In the course of the investigation, police said they conducted “reeanactments” of how the baby was found, and Hullenbaugh changed her story.
She said she checked on the boy three times after putting him down for the nap because “he was nonstop crying,” adding that she was “frustrated” with the crying. After the child died, police questioned her again, and she admitted to “smothering” him with a blanket.
After he stopped breathing, Hullenbaught told the officers that she “panicked” and adjusted the crib’s slats to “cover up what she did.” Then, she said, she waited 15 minutes before waking up the boy’s father.
Hullenbuagh was arraigned Wednesday on charges of criminal homicide, child endangerment, and strangulation. She was denied bail and is due in court again on February 8.
