A woman in Kansas City was sentenced to 13 years behind bars for placing her one-month-old daughter in an oven instead of a crib. Mariah Thomas was sentenced for the felony charge of endangering the welfare of a child resulting in death.
On Tuesday, September 22, Thomas pleaded guilty and accepted her sentence, with a first-degree murder charge being dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
Who is Mariah Thomas?
Thomas is a Kansas City mother whose child died in February 2024. Officers responded to a home on a report that an infant was not breathing on February 10. The baby was subsequently found dead at the scene, per Fox 10 News.
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According to detectives, the circumstances were suspicious enough to cause concern. This prompted an investigation.
The child was not breathing when first responders arrived at the scene. They noticed burns on the baby.
They said that Thomas claimed she was putting her baby down for a nap but accidentally put the child in the oven instead of the crib.
Thomas will now be transferred to the Missouri Department of Corrections to serve her sentence.
Endangerment and death cases involving children are under increased focus in the US in the aftermath of Lindsay Clancy’s trial. The Massachusetts mother faces three counts of murder in the killings of her children Cora, 5; Dawson3; and Callan, 8 months.
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According to prosecutors, Lindsay, 35, “acted intentionally, rationally and swiftly” when she fatally strangled her three children at their Duxbury home on January 24, 2023. Her defense attorneys, on the other hand, argued that she is not criminally responsible because she was in the midst of a psychotic episode that stemmed from postpartum mental illness.
Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial in Lindsay’s case after the jury returned without a verdict for the third time.