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.”

After a court tossed out the confession, a California man pleaded down from a murder charge to voluntary manslaughter for killing his then-girlfriend’s 1-year-old daughter. Derrick Dimone Woods, 47, was sentenced on Tuesday to 15 years and eight months in prison for killing Amanda Owens, 16 months, the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office announced.

He also pleaded guilty to physical child abuse for hurting and injuring Amanda’s 3-year-old brother, Elijah, and to false imprisonment by force or violence regarding both children.

A 22-year-old New Hampshire man stands accused of beating his girlfriend’s 23-month-old son to death when he was alone with the boy and she was grocery shopping.

Annthoni Bliss is charged with second-degree murder in the January 2024 death of Luca Hudson, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office said in a statement. The Keene Police Department and medical personnel responded the morning of Jan. 14, 2024, to an apartment for a young child in medical distress. They arrived to find Luca unconscious and not breathing. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital where he died three days later, just a month shy of his second birthday.

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A year-plus long investigation led to charges being filed against Bliss, who had started dating Luca’s mother about a month prior to the incident after knowing each other for several years, a probable cause arrest affidavit said. The medical examiner determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head and the manner of death homicide.

Bliss and the boy’s mother denied doing anything to hurt Luca. Bliss had been staying at his girlfriend’s apartment along with Luca and the boy’s older brother, cops said. Detectives noted that Luca showed no signs of injury in the days leading up to his death.

Through interviews and reviewing surveillance footage, investigators believe the abuse happened the night before cops responded to the apartment when Luca’s mother made a nearly hour-long trip to the grocery store, according to the affidavit. In text messages between her and Bliss while she was out, the defendant made no mention that anything may have been amiss. He said Luca’s older brother had fallen asleep.

“How’s shopping baby,” Bliss allegedly texted her.

“going to check out now,” she responded.

“Okay my love,” Bliss texted.

A mother in Hawaii is behind bars, along with her girlfriend, for allegedly starving and beating her 3-year-old daughter to death using belts, paddles, sticks and slippers to pound on the toddler — while also limiting her water intake to 8 ounces a day — along with her three of her siblings, ages 2 through 6, who managed to survive the “disturbing” abuse, according to police.

“First responders found Sarai malnourished and pulseless, with ashen skin and bruises to her legs, hips, arms, face, back and head,” explained Honolulu Police Department Lt. Deena Thoemmes at a press conference last Thursday after announcing the arrests of Janae Perez and Ashley Utley for the death of Perez’s daughter, Sarai Perez-Rivera, in June 2024, according to Hawaii News Now.

“Through the investigation, it was learned that Janae and Ashley limited Sarai and her siblings intake of water and food,” Thoemmes said. “Janae and Ashley did not allow them to eat often and only allowed them to drink 8 ounces of water a day.”

A Washington couple who pleaded guilty to manslaughter following the accidental shooting death of their 1-year-old daughter were sentenced to prison time.

Jesse Kitson, 34, and Arabella Watts, 26, were charged in the death of their baby daughter, who was killed on Dec. 4, 2021, when an unsecured gun fell off a coffee table and fired. According to court documents obtained by local news outlet HeraldNet, Kitson was walking back and forth from the grill outside to the kitchen while Watts was on the couch inside checking her phone.

At the time, Kitson told police that he had left the gun on a shelf, but Watts said it was on the coffee table. While the exact details of the shooting were unclear, police believed that the baby pulled a coat off the table, causing the loaded gun to fall off and fire a round into the girl, killing her.

A mother from Michigan has learned her fate for abandoning her 1-year-old son on Florida‘s Daytona Beach. The boy’s teenage brother reportedly called the cops on her on the day in question — claiming she was “possessed by demons.”

Shamika Mitchell, 38, was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison for her son’s abandonment. She was found guilty in November 2024 of aggravated child abuse and unlawful desertion of a child.

Florida’s Seventh Judicial Circuit Judge Karen Foxman said Mitchell had been using marijuana, drinking alcohol and possibly using meth while caring for the child, who was in the surf and could have drowned if he had not been rescued, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported.

The newspaper reported her public defender saying the defendant struggled through a difficult childhood and had a psychotic episode at the time of the incident.

A New Jersey woman hired to babysit a toddler was found inside the family’s home, allegedly passed out drunk, while her charge was spotted wandering around outside alone.

In a statement posted on Facebook, the Brigantine Police Department said that officers responded to a call from a “concerned citizen” who noticed a toddler walking around the neighborhood by himself and crying. The caller was a neighbor who recognized the boy and took him inside out of the freezing cold. While on the phone with dispatchers, the neighbor took the toddler back to his home, where they found the babysitter, 35-year-old Jena Davidson, unconscious and smelling of alcohol.

A Texas woman was recently arrested after she intentionally left her 16-month-old child alone to travel out-of-town to visit a man she met on a dating app, Lone Star State law enforcement say.

Reese Louise Myers, 25, stands accused of one count of abandoning or endangering a child, according to the Killeen Police Department.

The incident in question dates back to the middle of this past summer; the defendant was finally arrested near the small city of Barstow in the Inland Empire region of Southern California on a fugitive warrant earlier this month. She just made her way back to Texas this week.

A Georgia mother of three who killed her two little boys “by placing them in an oven and turning it on” will spend the rest of her life behind bars, a judge in Atlanta ruled on Friday.

Lamora Williams, 24, was convicted on myriad charges, including two counts of murder for the 2017 deaths of her sons, Ja’Karter Penn, 1, and Ke’Yaunte Penn, 2, who were killed roughly an hour apart.

The since-condemned woman called 911 that awful day.

“When I came in, the stove was laying on my son, on my youngest son’s head, and my other son was laid out on the floor with his brains laid out on the floor,” Williams told the dispatcher. “I don’t know what to do. I just came home from work.”

A Florida father will reportedly spend the next two decades behind bars after he and his wife left their 18-month-old daughter in a car in the middle of the Sunshine State’s scorching hot summer.

Joel Rondon, 34, pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter of a child in the death of his daughter last year and was sentenced Friday by Judge Jalal Harb, according to Tampa Fox affiliate WTVT. Joel Rondon tested positive for methamphetamine, marijuana, and alcohol, while his wife Jazmine Rondon tested positive for both marijuana and alcohol. They left the toddler overnight after returning home from a Fourth of July party.

Rondon reportedly said he felt “shattered and scarred” by his daughter’s death, with Harb having harsh words for him at the sentencing.

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“One of the most impressive facts of this case is that you decided to go back to the vehicle to retrieve your cigarettes, and you didn’t notice your child there,” the judge reportedly said. “This is not a question and you’re done talking. You failed that child then, and you continue to fail that child now.”

Jazmine Rondon, 34, also is charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child and is awaiting trial.

As Law&Crime previously reported, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release that the Rondon’s attended the celebration in Lakeland with their three children, ages 8 years, 6 years, and 18 months old. The family arrived home at about 3:00 a.m. on July 5th, 2023, after both parents had consumed alcohol and smoked marijuana during the course of the party, the release states.

Upon their return, Jazmine Rondon instructed her husband to bring the toddler inside while she took the other two children into their home. Joel Rondon said the car door they used to access the child’s car seat was opened at that time. He then brought a few things inside and went back out where he observed that all four doors of the car had been closed. Assuming his wife had retrieved their daughter, Joel Rondon got into bed with his wife and went to sleep.