GUILTY PA - Jarrod Tutko, 9, disabled, starved to death, Harrisburg, 29 July 2014

OkieGranny

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http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/08/child_found_dead_in_harrisburg.html

An 8-year-old boy who was found dead Friday night in a home off North Green Street likely died several days before he was discovered, according to the county district attorney and police...

Cleary later disclosed the child's age, and confirmed that both parents had been taken from the scene for questioning. The mother and father left the scene — both in handcuffs — in separate police cruisers, but Cleary emphasized that no charges were filed as of Friday night.

The couple's five remaining children — several of whom suffer from undisclosed medical conditions — were being handed over to the care of county children and youth specialists as of Friday night pending further investigation, said Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico, who arrived just before 10 p.m.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/08/father_charged_in_case_of_dead.html#incart_river

Jarrod Nicholas Tutko, 38, was charged with endangering the welfare of children, concealing the death of a child, and abuse of a corpse early Saturday morning, according to court records. Bail information regarding Tutko was not immediately available.

Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico confirmed this morning that Tutko is the father of household.

Marsico declined to answer any other questions about the arrest until an autopsy is performed on the boy's body on Monday.
 
Died several days before? Abusing a corpse, what on earth does that mean? Has only the father been charged?
 
I hate to even consider the possibilities. Yes, only the father so far.
 
Died several days before? Abusing a corpse, what on earth does that mean? Has only the father been charged?

Edit. Don't know hat happened there but it was posted twice. My tablet is playing up.
 

From your link:

Her husband, Jarrod Nicholas Tutko, went upstairs and came back with body of their eight-year-old son, Jarrod Jr., wrapped in a sheet and laid him on the bathroom floor, she said. Believing the boy had just died, Kimberly Tutko said she pulled the sheet back and quickly realized he had been dead for several days.

Kimberly Tutko said her husband told her the child died on Tuesday. "I said to him 'Why didn't you say anything?'" Kimberly Tutko said. "He said he was too afraid to say anything because of other kids in the house"...

She explained that her son was severely mentally disabled and was diagnosed with autism, failure to thrive, and Fragile X Syndrome, a genetic defect, that causes intellectual disability, behavioral, and learning challenges, according to the National Fragile X Foundation. Jarrod Jr. was kept on the third floor of the home and was primarily cared for by his father, Kimberly Tutko said.
 
From your link:

Oh this is just so terrible. Poor little guy.

Had no chance whatsoever "primarily cared for by father", "kept on the third floor", died on Tuesday and mother did not even know it!

So heartbreaking!
 
PA - Jarrod Nicholas Tutko, Sr., re: Death of Jarrod Jr., Dauphin County.

Day 5

Sat. Aug 2nd: http://www.abc27.com/story/26180023/father-charged-in-suspicious-death-of-his-child

Sat. Aug 2nd: http://local21news.com/news/feature...ges-suspicious-death-8yearold-son-10854.shtml

Sat. Aug 2nd: http://fox43.com/2014/08/02/father-charged-with-the-death-of-his-8-year-old-son/#axzz39Gz70uBf

Sat. Aug 2nd: http://ksn.com/2014/08/02/mom-i-didnt-know-boy-was-dead-until-smell-set-in/:

"The couple’s five other children have been placed in protective custody."

Sat. Aug 2nd via OkieGranny: http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/08/child_found_dead_in_harrisburg.html

Sat. Aug 2nd via OkieGranny: http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/08/father_charged_in_case_of_dead.html#incart_river

Historically, Coroners / Medical Examiners / Forensic Pathologists may order
additional Primary / Advanced Toxicology Tests.

Currently Incarcerated In Lieu Of $500,000 Bail:

Magisterial District Court Hearing Tue., Aug. 12th:
https://ujsportal.pacourts.us/docketsheets/MDJReport.ashx?docketNumber=MJ-12102-CR-0000294-2014:

18 § 4304 §§ A1 -- F3 :: Endangering Welfare of Children -
Parent/Guardian/Other Commits Offense
18 § 4303 §§ A -- M1 :: Conceal Death of Child
18 § 5510 -- M2 :: Abuse Of Corpse

Grades of PA Crimes:
H = Heinous
F1 = Felony of 1st Degree; F2; F3
M1 = Misdemeanor of 1st Degree; M2; M3
S = Summary

Historically, Most PA Charges Like These Have Been Advanced From Lower
Magisterial Justice Courts, to County Courts Of Common Pleas.

Similar to a very recent Lancaster County, PA case:
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...ster-County-23-Jul-14&p=10809366#post10809366


Our Concern For Son Jarrod's Remaining Siblings.
 
HARRISBURG, Pa. — The mother of an 8-year-old Pennsylvania boy whose decomposing body was found on the third floor of their home said Saturday she didn’t know he had died until noticing the smell.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/body-of-8-year-old-dead-several-days-found-in-home/2014/08/02/e17ed3be-1a6c-11e4-88f7-96ed767bb747_story.html

the pun is not intentional but this stinks. I am not buying that this mother was unaware of her own child dead in the same home she was residing in because the father was the one in charge of taking care of him and she was too busy with another SN child to be aware of something off one floor above, within her own household? What?
 
poor little angel. I pray he is at peace now. May justice be swift and severe!
 
Reading about the medical issues of some of the other children in the home, I wonder if this couple was adopting special needs children or were they just genetically unblessed?
 
Fragile X and autism... yet another of the most vulnerable children treated in the worst possible way. I'm glad I'm not one of the cops handling this, I don't think I'd be able to deal with it.

Died several days before? Abusing a corpse, what on earth does that mean? Has only the father been charged?
"Abusing a corpse" just means that he didn't handle a corpse properly. For this case it probably means that instead of calling for an ambulance or calling an undertaker, he just wrapped the body in a sheet and left it lying there. That charge sounds like something they added to the list because they were pretty sure there had been foul play and they need to keep him in jail with as high a bail as possible, so they just put down every applicable charge.
 
Fragile x is passed from the mother to the son. The daughter will not be effected by it but could be a carrier and pass it on to any sons she may have.
When I was employed in this field I cared for 3 men with fragile x all from the one family. The mother had 6 children. A daughter and a son who were not effected and 4 sons who were. One son died at 5 years of age as he was born very deformed with lots of medical problems.

The 3 sons were in care and could become violent. Faecal smearing is not uncommon. With a number of staff it would be cleaned as soon as it happened. It is a constant job to keep them and the home faecal free.
I think this family was out of their depth. There is a possibility that all the boys (don't know how many) had fragile x. This family needed help in my opinion.
For me at the end of the day I could go home have a shower to get rid of the smell and forget about it. Imagine if you lived with it 24 hours a day.
I am not excusing the parents. If they knew about fragile x why keep having more children? JMO
 
Thank you for cluing me in on fragile X Marge. It is not something I am familiar with. How horrible. I wonder what their daughter's disability is then that keeps mom with her 24/7 to the point where she is not ever spelled by someone long enough to see the son upstairs? I mean lots of kids with disabilities has to be overwhelming at times and maybe even often but these circumstances she describes sound like crisis mode. How long have they lived in crisis mode? Very sad case. I hope the other kids are doing alright.
 
I don't think Fragile X is something you can really categorize as "horrible". It's a challenge, it's a disability, but I've met people who had it and, while they usually do have intellectual disabilities, you can predict more about them by just considering that they are human, than by looking at the diagnosis. They have likes and dislikes, they get happy, angry, frustrated, proud, any emotion you'd care to name. They learn and grow. Some grow up to be independent, others semi-independent. Autism is a common comorbidity.

Regarding feces-smearing: Yup, kids will do that. Even typical kids, if they're young enough. It's a bother to clean up, but it's just poop, after all. It bugs me that people will use that, or the fact that somebody wears diapers, as a way of saying "this disability is so horrible that everybody around them must have found them to be a burden".

I don't know what happened to this kid, but I'm not willing to believe that a parent who cared about their child--any child, disabled or not--would just wrap him up in a sheet and dump him on the floor for four days. A parent who cared would, if they found their child dead, call 911 and say, "Help, my child is not breathing!"

The people in this house were already caring for at least one medically fragile child, and multiple disabled children. They would have known things like "Call 911 if your child is unresponsive". That this man didn't call 911 says to me that he either didn't care about the child, or caused the child's death directly, or neglected the child and caused his death.

Also, did you guys notice that the boy wasn't in school? At all? I don't mean home-schooled; I mean he was just kept at home, in that bare room. Every kid has a right to an education; even kids with profound ID get sent to school where they might listen to music or learn to put on a shirt or get therapy or whatever. This boy deserved a much better life than he got.
 
when I was talking about horrible I was speaking to the life these folks appear to have been living. The room, the boy isolated on third floor, the father solely responsible for this child per the mother. the motehr claiming it was not uncommon for her not to lay eyes on her son. The whole of it is horrible to me.
 
What I read in this dreadful story is this: they knew about the fragile X yet they continued to have more children, quite a few more children knowing they would also suffer fragile X, and they did not look after them properly. The parents were not sensible, yet they had multi-handicapped children. I doubt the mentality of the parents. I doubt their ability to be responsible, they were not capable of the responsibility of raising children, and not of raising multi-handicapped SN children.
Think the parents have mental problems.
 
I don't think Fragile X is something you can really categorize as "horrible". It's a challenge, it's a disability, but I've met people who had it and, while they usually do have intellectual disabilities, you can predict more about them by just considering that they are human, than by looking at the diagnosis. They have likes and dislikes, they get happy, angry, frustrated, proud, any emotion you'd care to name. They learn and grow. Some grow up to be independent, others semi-independent. Autism is a common comorbidity.

Regarding feces-smearing: Yup, kids will do that. Even typical kids, if they're young enough. It's a bother to clean up, but it's just poop, after all. It bugs me that people will use that, or the fact that somebody wears diapers, as a way of saying "this disability is so horrible that everybody around them must have found them to be a burden".

I don't know what happened to this kid, but I'm not willing to believe that a parent who cared about their child--any child, disabled or not--would just wrap him up in a sheet and dump him on the floor for four days. A parent who cared would, if they found their child dead, call 911 and say, "Help, my child is not breathing!"

The people in this house were already caring for at least one medically fragile child, and multiple disabled children. They would have known things like "Call 911 if your child is unresponsive". That this man didn't call 911 says to me that he either didn't care about the child, or caused the child's death directly, or neglected the child and caused his death.

Also, did you guys notice that the boy wasn't in school? At all? I don't mean home-schooled; I mean he was just kept at home, in that bare room. Every kid has a right to an education; even kids with profound ID get sent to school where they might listen to music or learn to put on a shirt or get therapy or whatever. This boy deserved a much better life than he got.

Here in Australia we have these schools. A fully fitted bus for wheelchairs as well as able bodied picks the children up in the morning and brings them home in the afternoon. Once they have completed their schooling there are adult centres for those who are not high functioning. Activities are well organized and they are always occupied. Then for the more high functioning there is employment. They are paid a small wage as well as their pension. This usually consist of packaging and assembly work.
I am wondering if these parents were themselves intellectually disabled or did they just keep to themselves and did not avail themselves of services that would have been available to them. JMO
 
what was life like for the other kids? The whole of it just doesn't make sense. Like Marg from Oz, I wonder why there wasn't services and relief from caretaking or something like that. There is still a lot we don't know about this case. But my initial gut reaction stands. I don't like what we have heard so far. It seems off and unusual.
 

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