Latest news with #babysitter
Daily Mail
20 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Sweet-looking Oklahoma babysitter charged with unthinkable killing of child after being hired on Facebook
A sweet-looking babysitter who was hired by parents on Facebook has been charged with the death of a 22-day-old Oklahoma child after police found she committed a similar sickening act on a two-month-old. Holly Sheppard, who is already serving a life sentence at Oklahoma County Detention Center for abusing a child in 2023, was slapped with additional charges Monday in connection to the tragic Oklahoma City death of Willow Rose Shelton. The infant was brought to St. Anthony's Hospital on January 25 with 'non-accidental abusive head trauma,' police told KOKH. She died soon after. Shelton's mother said Sheppard was taking care of her baby for four days when the incident occurred, according to court documents obtained by the outlet. Several witnesses were interviewed, but the lead investigator couldn't determine exactly who was taking care of the infant when she was injured so the case was left unsolved for seven years. But five years after Shelton died, another baby, two-month-old Korra Burdick, was brought to Oklahoma Children's Hospital on July 14, 2023 with a brain injury after being babysat by Sheppard in Ponca City - a little more than an hour outside of Oklahoma City. She thankfully survived and was moved to the intensive care unit. At the time, Sheppard told investigators she didn't know how the baby got hurt, but she later changed her story several times and went on to admit she dropped Burdick twice, The Bull Tulsa reported. She told authorities she dropped the child after tripping over a toy, but doctors said her brain injury was too extensive to be caused by a drop, an affidavit, reviewed by the outlet, showed. The baby was left with internal bleeding, two skull fractures and had to have a flap of her skull removed to relieve pressure, Kay News Cow reported at the time. Sheppard was then arrested for child neglect, child abuse and obstruction of justice. Her bond was set at $500,000 and she was ordered not to have any contact with children, records detailed. In November 2024, she entered a blind plea of no contest and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of release after 25 years in Kay County. But, now she might never get out after being charged with first-degree murder in the death of the first child. It is unclear how many years she could face behind bars for the death of baby Shelton. Ponca City Deputy Chief of Police Josh Henderson said Sheppard's crimes were 'inexcusable and represent a profound betrayal of the trust placed in someone responsible for a child's care.' 'No child should ever suffer harm at the hands of those entrusted with their safety,' Henderson told KOKH. 'We are grateful for the opportunity to assist other agencies across Oklahoma in their pursuit of justice in heartbreaking cases such as these.' Although years have gone on with no answers for the first crime, McKenzie Allen, Burdick's mother, has made sure both her and Shelton's stories are told. She started a Facebook page called Korra's Journey, where she gives updates of her daughter's milestones and success since the horrible injury. On Tuesday, after hearing Sheppard was charged with Shelton's murder, Allen posted: 'Justice for Baby Willow is finally happening. #JusticeForWillow #Justice4Korra' On the day Sheppard was sentenced for her daughter's incident, Allen took to the page sharing her pain and strength. 'Tomorrow is the day. The day that we sit in that courtroom reliving all the trauma like it happened yesterday,' she wrote. 'All the horrific memories and feelings flood back as we sit and listen. Tomorrow we will be able to stand up against evil and be Korra's voice.' Burdick recently celebrated her second birthday in April, according to her mom's Facebook. Joe Dorman, the CEO of the Oklahoma Institute of Child Advocacy, said these startling cases should serve as a reminder to parents to be cautious when picking a babysitter online. 'I would be wary of searching for any individual to be a babysitter on the internet,' he told KOCO News. 'If you go through a professional service, that's one thing, but don't just post to people who might be a connection on Facebook, "I need a babysitter," because how well do you truly know them?' Instead, Dorman said if parents can't turn to trusted relatives or friends to watch their children, they should use legitimate babysitting services that conduct background searches on caregivers. 'These businesses will hire individuals, ensure they're background checked, and put them through some training sometimes, so that's usually a better option,' he said. In Oklahoma specifically, he suggested parents check if potential babysitters have faced any charges by combing through the Oklahoma State Courts Network. 'That will allow you to look up any kind of court filing or some kind of ticket that an individual has received,' he explained. Still, Dorman noted that sometimes a parent's only option is to hire a stranger to be responsible for their kids. 'Sometimes you are placed into a situation where you have no choice but to pay a babysitter. You just want to make sure you're doing it as safe as possible.'
Free Malaysia Today
5 days ago
- Health
- Free Malaysia Today
10-month-old baby dies during bath by babysitter
Sungai Buloh police chief Hafiz Nor said a medical officer at the UiTM Hospital Puncak Alam informed them about the death. (Facebook pic) KUALA LUMPUR : A 10-month-old baby died after she was believed to have fallen while being bathed by her babysitter in Puncak Alam, Selangor, last Friday. Sungai Buloh police chief Hafiz Nor said the case was reported to the police by a medical officer at the UiTM Hospital Puncak Alam at 10.42pm. According to the medical officer, the baby, who was unconscious, was taken to the hospital's emergency department's red zone at 7.23pm in a hospital ambulance from a clinic in Puncak Alam. 'The complainant and emergency specialist doctors provided respiratory treatment and medication to the baby, which took about 22 minutes, but the baby showed no signs of breathing,' he said in a statement today. Hafiz said the baby's mother then filed a police report and stated she received a call from the babysitter at 5.40pm informing her that her child had fallen and was unconscious. 'According to the babysitter, the incident occurred when she wanted to bathe the baby. She took the baby to a clinic in Puncak Alam,' he said. Hafiz said the baby's body was taken to the UiTM Puncak Alam Hospital for a post-mortem, and the case was classified as sudden death pending the result of the post-mortem.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Yahoo
Brickbat: Bad Santa
Home security video revealed a babysitter funded by the New York City Administration for Children's Services abusing three young boys in her care. The video shows La'keysha Jackson beating the boys—brothers aged 2, 4, and 6 years—nearly 60 times with belts and hangers, throwing the youngest, and using a Halloween mask and a Santa Claus costume to scare them, prompting the family to demand answers. The New York Post reports Jackson has been fired and the police are investigating but no arrest has yet been made. Jackson was apparently the family's second city-funded sitter; the first was fired after she was found to be drinking and smoking at the playground while watching the kids. The post Brickbat: Bad Santa appeared first on
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Yahoo
Truck slams into Pontiac apartment with children inside, driver arrested
The Brief Three children were inside an apartment when a pickup truck slammed into the home. All the children escaped through a window. The driver of the truck was arrested. PONTIAC, Mich. (FOX 2) - Three children were inside a home in Pontiac when the driver of a pickup truck slammed into their apartment. On Tuesday, a boarded-up single-room flat apartment at the end of the intersection of Starlite and Cherry Hill in Pontiac was what was left of the scene. Timeline It was around 12:30 a.m. Saturday when the pickup hit the apartment. According to the sheriff's office, two 10-year-olds and a 13-year-old were inside at the time and had minor injuries from flying debris after the crash. They were inside gathering some items and planned to come right back to their babysitter's house when the truck hit. They managed to escape through the apartment's window. Local perspective Mya Edwards lives across the street from this apartment and heard what happened before she saw it. "You could still even see where the grass marks where she drove on the lawn into the house," she said. "Me and my fiancé heard the screech and then boom. So we immediately hopped up we looked out our window and we saw the car literally hit the building. They were just devastated, they were hurt, They were like, 'Oh my God, I can't believe my house looks like this.'" After the crash, a crowd started to gather. Edwards said the driver was trying to reverse out of the building but was unsuccessful. The driver then allegedly ran from the truck with her dog, but neighbors didn't let her get far. "People in the neighborhood ended up catching the woman over there, and held her until the police got here," Edwards said. "When they caught the woman, the parents had pulled up, and she was talking trash to the mom, and I'm like, 'You just hit her house,' and she was like, 'You don't even know me.' I'm like, 'She is about to learn everything about you because you just hit her house.'" What's next The driver, a 36-year-old from Pontiac, was arrested for operating a vehicle while intoxicated but was released until investigators get the results of a toxicology test.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Yahoo
Notorious ‘Superthief' gets life sentence after retrial in 1976 Boca Raton rape
It took nearly 50 years for a babysitter to see justice served for what happened to her when she was a teenaged girl on an October night in 1976. She was 15, babysitting in a wealthy Boca Raton neighborhood that had seen a rash of burglaries about the same time, so many that a now-retired officer who worked the area told the South Florida Sun Sentinel he couldn't estimate a number of them. She heard a knock at the door, looked out a window and when she turned around, saw a masked man walking in the hallway of the home on Malaga Drive, who then sexually assaulted her, court records say. The woman has now testified twice at trials of John MacLean, the man charged in her Oct. 16, 1976, rape — once in 2018 and once again earlier this month during a retrial where MacLean was again found guilty of armed sexual battery and sentenced to life on May 12. MacLean, now 78, has already been serving one life sentence at a Florida prison since 2018. He was convicted that year of armed sexual battery in a separate attack in Boca Raton from February 1977, where a woman was attacked by a man wearing a wig. Both the assaults in 1976 and 1977 were tried separately but in the same year. In the 1976 rape of the babysitter, it took the jury at the first trial less than an hour to return a conviction. But he won on appeal in 2020 and was given a retrial, resulting in the second conviction and second life sentence. MacLean's defense attorney Thomas Weiss declined to comment on the resolution of the case. For decades, the identity of the man who assaulted the girl in October 1976 and a 26-year-old mother just months later while armed with a gun was unknown; the attacker in each covered his face or wore a disguise. But DNA evidence, including from jeans the babysitter wore the night she was assaulted, led to cold case detectives unmasking MacLean in 2012. MacLean's criminal history is lengthy and spans multiple states. While serving a prison sentence in Florida in the 1980s for numerous burglaries, including a notorious one of the mansion of a Johnson & Johnson heiress where $1 million worth of jewelry was stolen, he published a braggadocious book, 'Secrets of a Superthief: An Inside guide to Keeping Burglars Outside Your Home.' But MacLean's crimes went beyond burglaries and theft. Officers with multiple departments in South Florida in the early 1980s suspected him in possibly hundreds of sexual battery cases locally and elsewhere in the state. The babysitter went to the home on Malaga Drive about 7 p.m. It was a Saturday night. The area at the time was one of the wealthiest. Often people returned to the neighborhood on a Friday or Saturday night from going out to dinner or from having drinks to find their homes had been burglarized, said retired Boca Raton Deputy Chief of Police Philip Sweeting, who at the time was an officer and processed crime scenes. Such a call on a weekend was almost a 'guarantee,' he said. 'No one would be home,' he said. 'And in this case, there was a babysitter.' It was late into the night, about 11:30 p.m., when the girl was watching TV and heard a knock at the door. She ignored it, thinking it was maybe just the kids who lived next door, according to a probable cause affidavit. But when the knocking continued, she got up to look out of a window near the door. She saw nothing. A man was in the dark hallway near the kitchen when she turned around, wearing a dark-colored stocking over his head and holding a small handgun, the affidavit said. He got in through an opened screen door. 'Don't worry, I won't hurt you,' the man told her. 'Just don't scream and nobody will get hurt.' The man took her outside onto the home's patio, where her jeans were left, before taking her into a bedroom and assaulting her, the affidavit said. The attacker was still inside the home as the parents returned at midnight, knocking on the door. The girl quickly grabbed her pants from the patio and was soon at the hospital after reporting what happened to her. Assistant State Attorney Reid Scott pointed out in a court motion from 2013 how MacLean's lengthy history as a burglar made him 'experienced in entering and exiting residences without being detected and without leaving evidence that would identify him.' Sweeting, who testified at the recent trial as a state witness, canvassed the crime scene that night for evidence. He and another crime scene investigator focused on the master bedroom, processing it for latent fingerprints, collecting the sheets and taking photos. Outside the home, they also found shoe prints, he said. They took photos and plaster casts of the impressions. But it was DNA evidence on the girl's jeans she had quickly put back on that eventually led to MacLean. 'We didn't have a suspect for a long time,' Sweeting said. Boca Raton Police began revisiting at least 15 unsolved sexual assault cases from the 1970s in 2010. The few of those cases that still had existing evidence had happened within five miles along a segment of highway in Boca Raton, Scott wrote in the 2013 court motion. They reopened the babysitter's assault case in December 2011 and sent a stained piece from the girl's jeans no bigger than a quarter to be tested for DNA. It gave a match to MacLean. His fingerprints had been entered into a federal law enforcement database in 2005 for committing a sex offense in Arizona and gave a second DNA sample two years later, court records say. In 2012, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Crime Lab got a match for MacLean from DNA evidence in both the 1976 and 1977 Boca Raton assaults. In October 2012, MacLean was arrested and charged with two counts of armed sexual battery, charges which have no statute of limitations. MacLean's former defense attorneys, and MacLean in his own handwritten letters to a judge, tried to poke holes in the DNA evidence. Other evidence — including the shoeprint casings, bedroom sheets and all latent fingerprints — were no longer available, either lost or destroyed, MacLean's former attorneys wrote in one court motion. Still, a jury convicted him in 2018, the jury foreman telling the Sun Sentinel at the time that they were convinced by the DNA evidence. But the 4th District Court of Appeal overturned the conviction because of an issue with jury instructions, and the State Attorney's Office sought another conviction. 'We are pleased that the verdict and sentence have once again delivered justice for the victim of this brutal crime that happened nearly 49 years ago,' State Attorney's Office spokesperson Marc Freeman said in an emailed statement. MacLean in jail letters to a judge after his arrest contended that he is innocent in the Boca Raton assaults and that the self-proclaimed 'Superthief' had found religion. 'My wife and I have committed our lives to Christ and serving others,' he wrote in one letter. Information from the Sun Sentinel archives was used in this report.
