WARNING: Extremely upsetting content.
In a tragic case, a 62-year-old mother has been charged with aggravated manslaughter in the US this week after her son (6) beat his newborn sister resulting in her death.
The woman, who once took part in a reality TV show called
I'm Pregnant and 55 Years Old, was arrested after investigators learned that she had left her three children alone in a car in a Florida carpark for nearly 40 minutes without any adult supervision.
The baby who died from her injuries last Monday afternoon was just 13 days old.
According to reports, the six-year-old boy was left with his younger brother, aged three and his baby sister while his mother went into a mobile phone shop. When the baby became distressed, the boy attempted to calm her.
Later, however, he demonstrated with a doll for police, how he had slammed the baby's head into the ceiling of the mini-van when she didn't stop crying.
One sheriff told the
Tampa Bay Times:
"It was one of the worst things I've ever seen."
The mother conceived her two younger children using the frozen sperm of her husband who passed away from cancer in 2011. She had been raising the children by herself.
Police have confirmed that the young boy will not be facing criminal charges as "the mistake is with the adult... not a 6-year-old boy."
According to
News.com, authorities were aware of the family as the baby girl had been treated for a minor brain bleed previous to this incident and had been kept in hospital for two nights monitoring.
The bleed occurred just three days after the baby was born when an accidental fire in the family home forced the mother and her children to flee. She told authorities that she had put the baby in a car seat but had tripped going down the stairs causing the baby to fall out and hit her head.
A report was made at that time (29 July) to a child abuse hotline, and the mother was scheduled to be evaluated by investigators on August 1st, but she canceled and rescheduled. Her other two children have been placed in therapeutic foster care.
