A 28-year-old mother and a 31-year-old man were arrested in Michigan in the death of the woman’s 3-year-old son, who investigators say was killed in his home nearly seven years ago.

Amanda Maison and Maurice Houle, her boyfriend at the time of the incident, were taken into custody on Friday and charged with one count each of first-degree murder in the 2018 slaying of young Matthew Maison, authorities announced. Houle is also facing three counts of assaulting, resisting, or obstructing a police officer stemming from his alleged conduct during Friday’s arrest.

According to a Friday news release from the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office, Matthew was found dead in his bed inside of the family’s Port Huron Township home on Feb. 18, 2018. While no details surrounding the circumstances of the arrests were provided last week, the sheriff’s office said that the arrests were made following “significant recent developments” in the investigation into the toddler’s death.

During their arraignment hearing on Monday, prosecutors said that Matthew suffered “years of abuse at the hands of both defendants,” per courtroom footage posted by Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV.

“We came to realize of a scheme where both defendants conjured up this lie of previous injuries to the victim in our case, Matthew Maison, and came up with the lie about how the injury occurred prior to talking to investigators,” Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Josh Sparling said Monday, adding that both defendants “admitted” that the other abused Matthew.

Sparling alleged that Matthew was subjected to “very cruel, torturous abuse and punishment” such as “being placed in timeout on his knees where his head would be banged off the drywall” and being “locked in his room for hours on end without food or water.”

“There was a prior time where Maurice place a pillow over this child’s face and pretended like he was playing, but yet we know from the autopsy that Matthew died from blunt force trauma from all of the injuries he sustained as well as suffocation,” Sparling said.

The proceedings then took on an even more depraved tone as the prosecutor relayed another pernicious allegation levied against Maison and Houle.

“Not to mention this plan that was put forth to kill Matthew to make room for a child the two of them could have together,” Sparling said.

The Macomb County Scanner reported that during the duo’s arraignment on Monday, it was revealed that Matthew was likely beaten and choked to death, with investigators determining that his manner of death was a homicide.

“It is my opinion that Matthew Maison died secondary to blunt traumatic injuries with features of asphyxiation,” St. Clair County Medical Examiner Daniel Spitz reportedly wrote in the autopsy report. “The extent, severity, and distribution of the traumatic injuries is indicative of inflicted trauma.”

Prior to Monday’s proceedings, authorities had not released any details about the boy’s death.

The Times Herald reported that on the morning of Feb. 19, 2018, deputies and emergency medical personnel responded to the Maison residence in response to an unresponsive child in the home. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders found Matthew inside the home, already dead.

The newspaper in February 2020 submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the 911 call placed in connection with the boy’s death, but was told that the recording system for St. Clair County Central Dispatch automatically deletes recordings after one year.

Amanda Maison’s brother, Andrew Maison, and his wife, Hilery Maison, are currently serving sentences of life in prison without the chance of parole for the 2015 murder of Andrew Maison’s 5-year-old daughter Mackenzie Maison. They were also found guilty of severely abusing his 3-year-old daughter, Makayla Maison.

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A 58-year-old former magistrate judge in Pennsylvania will likely spend decades behind bars for trying to kill her boyfriend, shooting the 55-year-old man in the head while he slept in his home last year. A jury in Lancaster County on Wednesday found Sonya M. McKnight guilty on charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault in the attack that left Michael McCoy permanently blind in one eye, authorities announced.

Jurors heard two days of testimony before deliberating and convicting McKnight, who previously shot her estranged husband in the groin in an incident that was determined to be self-defense.

According to a news release from the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office, the shooting took place in the early morning hours of Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024, at McCoy’s home in the 200 block of Saddle Ridge Drive in Dauphin County.

“McKnight shot the victim in the head while the victim was sleeping in bed,” prosecutors wrote in the release. “The bullet entered the right side of the victim’s face, traversed through his head in a straight line behind and slightly below his eyes and exited the left side of his face. The victim survived the gunshot wound but is blind in one eye as a result.”

While the shooting took place in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, the Cumberland County DA’s Office assumed jurisdiction of the investigation at the request of Dauphin County DA Fran Chardo. Chardo explained that his office had a conflict of interest and could not prosecute the case because McKnight was a magisterial district judge in the county.

Chardo had initially requested that the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office take jurisdiction over the case, but the AG’s office also said it had a conflict of interest in prosecuting McKnight.

The boyfriend in a stomach-turning child neglect case pleaded guilty and was sentenced on Monday to his role in two children living in filth-ridden circumstances. Joel Manke, 40, is following the mother, Katie Koch, 36, with the same punishment: 10 years in prison, and 10 on extended supervision.

He had pleaded guilty to two counts of chronic neglect of a child (consequence is emotional damage), with the court dismissing two counts of false imprisonment

Koch pleaded guilty to two counts of chronic neglect of a child (consequence is emotional damage), and one count of false imprisonment. The court dismissed one count of false imprisonment, and two counts of neglecting a child (specified harm did not occur). As previously reported, cops in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said they got 911 calls about two boys, ages 7 and 9, running naked through the street. They were covered in blood, feces, bruises, and red marks.

A Florida woman received quite the surprise Friday afternoon when she saw a dog wandering in her front yard and found an unaccompanied little girl sitting on a chair in her carport. Now the child’s mother, 27-year-old Aquania Aleshia Estes, and her 29-year-old boyfriend Pitrez Floyd are behind bars.

The neighbor called the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office around 4:30 p.m. Friday after discovering the child and dog outside her Deltona home, a press release said.

Per deputies, the girl told the neighbor she was “hot, thirsty and hungry.” She brought the girl food, water, toys and clean clothes as deputies tried to find her parents. Cops posted body camera footage of deputies’ interaction with the girl.

“You don’t know if you live nearby here?,” a deputy asked.

The girl said she wasn’t sure.

“You don’t? You don’t know mommy and daddy’s name?,” the deputy responded.

She gave cops the name “Quana.”

“Why did mommy and daddy drop you off by yourself,” the deputy queried.

The girl said: “They had to go somewhere.”

She didn’t know when they’d be coming back.

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“Mommy and daddy needed to go charge their cell phones,” the child told deputies according to an arrest affidavit obtained by local Fox affiliate WOFL.

She also said she did not attend school.

Medical personnel responded to the scene to take the girl’s vital signs and they came back OK, per deputies.

Cops tracked down Estes and Floyd some nine hours later, the press release said. Body camera footage showed deputies were incredulous at the situation.

“You leave your kid on the side of the f—in’ road?” a deputy asked.

The two sons of a slain Georgia man have sued the woman charged with killing him for wrongful death. The defendant, Suzanne Renee Mericle, 61, opened fire through the bedroom door after James David Barron, 68, backed away from an argument, according to the complaint viewed by Law&Crime.

“This family has suffered an unspeakable tragedy and this civil suit has been initiated to protect the family and their legal rights,” said the plaintiff statement, according to The Brunswick News. “The Barrons kindly request that their privacy be respected during this difficult time. Our firm generally does not comment on pending litigation and this is particularly true in a case like this, where an investigation is still ongoing. Therefore, we have no further comment at this time.”

The “mangled up” body of a man killed by his girlfriend’s teenage son was discovered on a busy Louisiana bridge last week — leading to murder and accessory charges for his partner, her 17-year-old and the woman’s mom — after the family tried wrapping him in a blanket and dumping him over the side with a kettlebell, officials say.

Coshelia Conley, 36, of Baker, was trying to cover up her boyfriend Gerard Nicholas Richard’s death last Thursday after her son, Da’Sean Conley, shot and killed him while the two were arguing and fighting that night, according to their arrest affidavit, which was filed by the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office and obtained by local CBS and ABC affiliates WAFB and WBRZ, respectively.

Armed with a large kitchen knife with a pink handle, 22-year-old Wisconsin resident Kailee Brantner allegedly attacked her boyfriend last week — plunging the blade into his neck and slicing him open on his arms and chest — during a disagreement over using their house as their future wedding venue, cops say.

“The defendant attacked him without warning,” Brantner’s criminal complaint alleges, according to local Fox affiliate WITI. “(Brantner) had woken up to text messages and screenshots between the defendant and his mother, and this caused an argument.”

Brantner, a mom from Waukesha County, was charged Friday with a count of first-degree recklessly endangering safety using a dangerous weapon in a domestic abuse situation for the Jan. 29 incident, according to online court records. She posted bond and is now required to stay at least 1 mile away from her boyfriend.

A 17-year-old Florida girl is behind bars after she allegedly stabbed her boyfriend to death just days before Christmas while they were allegedly “horseplaying” with a knife in a parking garage.

Court records show Jahara Malik is facing a charge of manslaughter with a deadly weapon in the Dec. 20 death of 17-year-old Yahkeim Lollar in Miami. She’s at the Miami-Dade County jail on a $50,000 bond. According to an arrest affidavit obtained by local ABC affiliate WPLG, Miami police responded to a report of a stabbing in the parking garage at Lollar’s apartment complex in the 6100 block of Northwest Sixth Court. Paramedics rushed him to a hospital where he died.

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Per the affidavit, Malik was set to go shopping with a friend on the day in question. Before she left, she was looking for the pepper spray she typically used for protection but could not find it so she grabbed a knife instead, the affidavit reportedly said. After shopping she went to meet with Lollar in the parking garage. The two were “horseplaying” and she somehow ended up stabbing him in the chest.

Surveillance video allegedly shows Malik dropping the knife in the parking garage. A portion of Malik’s statement to police was reportedly redacted from the affidavit. A medical examiner deemed the death a homicide a few weeks later.

A Texas woman was recently released from jail after she allegedly lured her longtime boyfriend to a field and then shot him repeatedly.

Alexys Pinto, 23, stands accused of one count of aggravated assault over the incident that left Elvis Munoz, 24, with multiple gunshot wounds across his body — and a bullet in his back for months.

The shooting occurred on Sept. 5. The victim, in recovery, has been struggling to come up with a reason for the violence ever since.