PALM HARBOR, Florida (WFTS)—A 5-month-old baby boy has died after authorities say he suffered a severe brain bleed from abuse.
The baby’s mother Burgandie Marquez, 30, was arrested on the afternoon of Sept. 29, by detectives with the Crimes Against Children Unit.
On Tuesday night, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office charged Marquez with first-degree murder.
During an interview, Marquez gave contradicting statements before admitting she was too “rough” with her son, according to detectives.
Marquez told authorities that on Thursday, after she became enraged during a phone call with the baby’s father, she intentionally jerked the 5-month-old up from the ground twice causing his head to snap backward. She told detectives she then picked the child up and ran up and down a set of stairs, allowing his head to bounce without support.
On Friday morning, Marquez says she noticed the baby was having seizures. Detectives say instead of seeking medical attention, she tried consoling the baby.
Detectives assigned to the Crimes Against Children Unit have arrested a woman for Aggravated Child Abuse after a 5-month-old suffered a traumatic brain injury in Palm Harbor.
Full story here: https://t.co/ln49I7L4PG pic.twitter.com/480cTG9tNR— Pinellas SO (@SheriffPinellas) September 29, 2019
Later that day, Marquez traveled to Pasco County with the baby to meet with his father. She stopped at a gas station when his condition got worse and he was airlifted to St. Joseph’s for life-threatening injuries.
Staff at the hospital told detectives the child suffered a severe brain bleed caused by head trauma.
The 5-month-old boy was placed on life support, but taken off of it Monday afternoon, according to detectives.
Witnesses told detectives the baby appeared to be fine on Wednesday. Marquez was the infant’s only caretaker between Monday and Friday, according to detectives.
Marquez was arrested and taken to the Pinellas County Jail, where she remains.
The Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office will conduct an autopsy later, the date of the autopsy was not released at this time. Detectives will determine after the autopsy if they will upgrade the criminal charges for Marquez.
Facts About Crime in the United States
Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) (pdf).
The rate of violent crimes fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI’s UCR, which only reflects crimes reported to the police.
The violent crime rate dropped by 74 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the BJS’s NCVS, which takes into account both crimes that have been reported to the police and those that have not.
The FBI recently released preliminary data for 2018. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January to June 2018, violent crime rates in the United States dropped by 4.3 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.
While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend. Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4, according to an Epoch Times analysis of FBI data. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968.
