A North Carolina mother has been arrested and charged with murder after police said she told them she pressed her days-old son into her chest and smothered him because he would not stop crying.
“It was an accident,” Aishia Marie Pacheco, 22, told CBS affiliate WBTV last week as she walked into a courthouse in Alexander County. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to do it.”
Her court-appointed attorney, Joel Harbinson, told The Washington Post on Tuesday that the case is still under investigation but that Pacheco “has maintained it was an accident from the very beginning.”
Authorities are still awaiting the autopsy results, Harbinson said.
The Hickory Daily Record reported that Pacheco’s son, Tyler, was born on May 20.
“He is doing great and I love him so much,” she reportedly wrote on Facebook at the time, adding: “I am so proud to be his mom.”
On May 24, Alexander County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a 911 call about an unresponsive newborn at a home in Wittenburg township, about 60 miles from Charlotte, Sheriff Chris Bowman told reporters, according to reports. When they arrived, he said, they found the baby, who had bruising around his mouth and nose.
“We heard the sirens, and I thought, ‘My God, something happened to that baby,'” Cindy, a neighbor, told the Hickory Daily Record.
Paramedics pronounced the newborn dead at the scene and took his body to Wake Forest Baptist Hospital for an autopsy, police said.
Authorities said they believe the baby died Monday night, though they are not sure why the mother waited until Tuesday to call 911.
“The mother admitted to us that she had held the baby up to her chest, because the child had been crying, and smothered the child,” Bowman said, according to the Hickory Daily Record. “We have individuals out here who are begging for children, that can’t have children and would give good homes. It is a shame that something like this would have to happen.”
“It’s tough,” he added. “It’s tough on the first responders, tough on investigators.”
Another neighbor, Glenda Turner, told ABC affiliate WSOC that she had thought Pacheco would be a good mother.
“I thought she was going to be a good mom because she looked so happy holding the baby in the hospital,” she said.
Pacheco was charged with second-degree murder.
Pacheco’s bond has been set at $1,000,000.
She is scheduled to appear in court June 6.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Lindsey Bever
