[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
An Ohio mother, who prosecutors say killed her 6-year-old son before dumping his body into the Ohio River after trying to abandon him, has pleaded guilty in court.
Brittany Gosney (pictured above, bottom right), 29 years old, registered a guilty plea with the court on Monday, admitting to one count of murder and two counts of endangering children, according to online court records first confirmed by People.
Back in early March, we previously reported on Gosney’s attempt to abandon her 6-year-old son, identified by authorities as James Hutchinson, and how she’d been arrested in the case after he was killed under mysterious circumstances.
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According to police reports, authorities are still searching for Hutchinson’s remains. Gosney agreed to confess to the crime in part to spare her other two children from having to testify in this bone-chilling, gut-wrenching case — according to Preble County, Ohio law enforcement officials.
Gosney confessed to police that she killed the boy on February 26 while trying to abandon him and her other two children, ages 7 and 9, at a desolate and remote park in central Preble County in the middle of the night. Gosney admitted to cops that she drove the children to Rush Run Park, located in the middle of the county just a few miles east of the Indiana border, right around midnight.
Once there, she ordered all three of them to get out of the minivan, and she then drove away, leaving them alone to fend for themselves in this rural park and nature preserve in the middle of the freezing cold night. Authorities claim she even had “hog-tied” and gagged all three children for several hours on February 25 or early February 26 before abandoning them altogether at the park.
As she then drove away from the children, Gosney admitted that James grabbed onto the door handle in a bid to remain with his mother. He was then “dragged for a distance at a high rate of speed,” until he fell off. Officials later confirmed that the young boy had hit his head while being dragged and was severely injured.
Gosney drove off, but about a half-hour later she returned to the park and found the boy in the middle of the road. Thinking he was dead, she put him and the other two children in the minivan and brought them all home. She initially put James in an upstairs bedroom, but then the next day, she and boyfriend James Hamilton (pictured above, top left) drove to the nearby Ohio River and allegedly dumped the boy’s body into the water there, according to her admission.
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The whole thing apparently occurred because Hamilton had been pressuring Gosney to get rid of her children, according to an incident report from earlier in the investigation. Hamilton has not been charged with James’ murder, but he has been charged with multiple felonies in the case, and is set to go to trial to defend himself against the accusations on October 4. Until then, he remains in jail on a $750,000 bond; his attorney could not be reached at this time.
As for Brittany, her next step is sentencing, which will take place in another few weeks.
If there’s any justice in the world…
[Image via Middletown Division of Police]