This is incredibly sad.
A four-month-old baby boy named Gabriel McFarland was killed by his 17-year-old father Drew James Weehler-Smith after the mother Markeya Atkins left the child in his care.
The horrific incident happened on April 22nd in Des Moines, Iowa, and what’s worse is that the teenage mother had initially given the child up for adoption, but changed her mind later on.
Rachel and Heidi McFarland had taken care of the child until March, and only learned of his awful demise from watching the news on television. Iowa law allows a parent to renege after allowing another couple to adopt their child.
Markeya Atkins initially left her son in the father’s care at around 7:22pm on April 22nd, but when a friend dropped in and saw the father with the child and asked Markeya on the phone if she trusted him Markeya asked the friend to go back and check on them. However she then saw the father driving off without the baby.
She called the mother to inform her of what she saw, and the mother returned to find the child unresponsive in his chair. The friend then called 9-1-1, and said:
“Someone left my friend’s baby that they were baby-sitting by themselves, and the baby’s blue. He just left him here.”
Atkins’ friend tried to give the child CPR until an ambulance arrived and took over, but the hospital later pronounced the baby dead. The child was found to have died from abusive head trauma.
The 17-year-old father now faces a charge of first degree murder and one charge of neglect of a dependent person. If convicted on the former charge – he’ll face life in prison. A conviction of the latter could lead to up to 50 years in jail.
Both the birth mom and the temporary adoptive parents have been left devastated by this news, and we honestly feel something awful for both of them.
It’s hard enough to even hear about something so tragic, let alone to experience it firsthand.
[Image via WhoTV.]