A 13-day-old baby girl is dead after Pinellas County deputies say she was pummeled by her 6-year-old brother.
Sheriff Bob Gualtieri says the children’s mother, Kathleen Marie Steele, 62, of North Redington Beach, was arrested on charges of aggravated manslaughter and neglect in the infant’s death.
Investigators say Steele left the baby, also named Kathleen, in a vehicle with her two siblings while she went into a cellphone repair store on Monday. While she was inside the store, the infant started crying and her 6-year-old brother snapped, said deputies.
The boy picked up the baby and dropped her on the floor of the vehicle, then “slammed” her around the vehicle, officials say.
Gualtieri says the baby’s skull was cracked and she probably died in the vehicle.
Steele left the children in the vehicle by themselves for more than a half hour, he says. After leaving the store, Steele drove to Enterprise Rent-A-Car and spent another half hour there before returning home, the sheriff says.
According to deputies, the boy admitted to what happened and told his mother about the baby’s condition, but she ran another errand before returning home. Deputies say Steele then called a neighbor, who is a nurse, but the neighbor realized the infant was dead and called 911. The child was taken to St. Petersburg General Hospital, where she was officially declared dead.
In 2010, Steele appeared in a reality show “55 and Pregnant.” The financial advisor and her husband had been awaiting their first son. Since then, Steele’s husband died of cancer in September 2011. The sheriff said she then became pregnant with her husband’s frozen sperm and had another son, who is now 3 years old, and gave birth to baby Kathleen the end of July.
Neighbors say the 6-year-old brother apparently didn’t like the idea of a new baby. An accidental fire was started in their home days before her arrival.
Steele was also under investigation by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office Child Protection Investigation Division at the time. At just 3 days old, the baby fell from her car carrier down the stairs of a Treasure Island hotel. Despite a brain bleed, investigators ruled it an accident.
Days later, the sheriff says a complaint to the DCF hotline about the mother’s inadequate supervision couldn’t be proven. Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary Mike Carroll says his department had no prior involvement with the family.
The school district says the first grader will not be returning to Lakewood Elementary. There will be counselors for staff and students on Friday. Pinellas County Schools says it will continue to work with the Sheriff’s Office and Child Protective Services as they establish the best plan moving forward for the child.
The boys are now separated and in DCF foster care.
What’s up with ppl leaving them kids in car to go about them merry ways,like phuck’n really?
My question is why her 62yrs old self making all these damn children for?
Most likely welfare!
Aye sah. I could say so many things right now that’s wrong with this whole sequence of events from the beginning, but I’ll just say I feel sad for the dead child & even sadder for the living – especially if he’s just another upcoming psychopath or sociopath.
Damn serious and funny at the same time. “Children live what they learn” but this little bugger should be in juvi cause 6 yrs old no fi fool and vicious so a tall a tall.
This woman is cray cray, and so is the firstborn.
Life nuh happen by accident even when it seem that way. Your womb never ketch life in u youth and you push and push eena old age fi get more than a belly full and see di end here. Is sed way an old friend told me of an aunt that try fi years fi get pregnant and finally she did way up in age and is a completely disabled child wid all kinds of ailments from neurological to physical she hab. Sometimes wi need to trust life and accept seh di way wi life going is how it should be and stop force and try fi push through things that were never intended fi wi.
I hope di dirty system nuh hide dis child’s history and pass him off to an unsuspecting person fi adoption.
Girl you know somebody gonna have :babyboy ‘damian’ up in dem good up good up home without a clue :hammer
They’ll do therapy when him Start kill off de pets or strike out a school viciously.
:shakehand2 :shakehand2
A wah him a go chu so. Him pressure high?
Like dem neva fi bawn yow
A so ppl force things fi true
Can you imagine who this child terrorized other children at school and daycare. He could have killed some one else child.
R.I.P baby girl. PP I agree with u as for the Juvi part. He knew what he was doing cause they said he started the fire…. Early signs he’s showing.