A Missouri couple is accused of nearly starving their 1-year-old son to death, allegedly failing to feed the special-needs toddler despite ample food in the home, with the father blaming their failures on smoking pot and “falling asleep.” Braxton Blevins and Emily Katz were taken into custody earlier this week and charged with one count each of child abuse and one count each of child endangerment, records show.

According to a probable cause affidavit, officers with the Carthage Police Department on March 1, 2025, responded to a call from Children’s Mercy Hospital regarding a 1-year-old male juvenile who had been admitted with “severe malnutrition, starvation, recurrent infections, and failure to thrive.”

Medical personnel told authorities the victim had been hospitalized multiple times in his short life for similar conditions.

“In each instance, when placed under hospital-supervised care and fed according to the prescribed protocol, the juvenile gained weight and improved,” the affidavit states. “Hospital staff stated this demonstrated the victim’s medical complications were treatable with proper care and nutrition, which Blevins was trained on and said he was providing.”

Despite the couple claiming that Blevins had been providing their son with proper care at home and following the prescribed feeding plan, officers said they recovered between 10 and 20 unused bags of the victim’s “Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN)” that was stored in the family’s refrigerator. One bag of TPN, required daily, delivers nearly 80% of the child’s required total daily caloric intake.

The bags were administered through a central line feeding tube.

“The presence of excess TPN supplies indicated the juvenile was not receiving the prescribed nutrition,” police wrote.

While hospital staff told authorities that both parents had completed the medical training required to care for their son’s nutrition needs, but said that each subsequent time the victim was hospitalized, neither parent was “consistently unable to explain the home care provided or account for the juvenile’s weight loss and deteriorating condition.”

The hospital’s safety, care, and nurturing team concluded that there was sufficient evidence that the victim was consistently missing feedings and that his repeated hospitalizations were “the result of Blevins’ neglect.”

A mother in Minnesota is heading to prison for murdering her 23-month-old son by slamming his head repeatedly into a bedroom wall and then lying to police about what happened, claiming he was run over by his father — who happened to have his car in the shop at the time.

“She took my baby’s life,” said Robert Ortez, father of Aaryan, who was killed by his mom Larena Jackson in August 2023. “I still don’t know, to this day, what really happened because she isn’t saying anything,” Ortez told Valley News Live. “I’m still trying to figure out why she did it. I don’t know why[.]”

A 26-year-old mother in Pennsylvania has been arrested for allegedly killing her 3-month-old son, beating the child to death and then blaming the fatal injuries on her 3-year-old daughter, saying the toddler was jealous of the newborn.

Alisha Parker was taken into custody on Sunday and charged with one count of criminal homicide and one count of endangering the welfare of a child, authorities announced.

According to a press release from the Allegheny County Police Department, officers with Duquesne Police responded to a home at about 1:57 a.m. on Sunday in the 300 block of Hemlock Alley in regards to a report about an unresponsive male infant. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders said they immediately began to perform CPR on the victim and rushed him to a hospital, where he died.

Parker reportedly told police her toddler daughter fatally injured the infant, imploring authorities to “evaluate” her.

“If there’s anything that happened out of the ordinary, my 3-year-old child did it and ya’ll need to do something about that,” she told detectives, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “She’s the last person to see him alive and she’s been doing little jealousy, little things — evaluate that girl.”

According to the affidavit, Parker and her two kids had recently moved in with Parker’s cousin and the cousin’s 18-month-old child before the victim’s death.

The cousin reportedly told police that she left the house to go to work at about 5 that evening and got home at about 1 the following morning, having called Parker several times to ask her to check on her 18-month-old. The cousin said at about 11:20 p.m., she called Parker and heard the victim crying in the background.