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 this week as she walked into a courthouse in Alexander County. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to do it.”
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.
“I am so proud to be his mom,” she added.
But Tuesday morning, 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 that the newborn had bruising around his mouth and nose.
Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene, but police believe the baby died Monday night, according to news reports. He was transported to Wake Forest Baptist Hospital for an autopsy, police said.
“We heard the sirens, and I thought, ‘My God, something happened to that baby,'” a neighbor, identified as Cindy, told the Hickory Daily Record.
“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. Her court-appointed attorney, Joel Harbinson, could not immediately be reached for comment.
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
