CT - Elijah Gasque, 19 mos, dies of head trauma, Hartford, 11 Jan 2008

How awful! What a liar that "babysitter" is!
 
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - A baby sitter was charged with the murder of a toddler who police said was fatally injured when she swung him around in a sleeping bag for fun and his head smacked a door frame.

Police re-arrested 25-year-old Yalines Torres late Wednesday, a day after she was released after posting bond on charges of risk of injury to a minor and reckless endangerment.

Torres was being held on $1 million bond on the new charge of capital felony murder and was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday, Sgt. Edward Yergeau said.

Torres was watching 19-month-old Elijah Gasque on Friday evening while his mother worked. According to a police report, Torres told Julie Adkins-Gasque that Elijah had a seizure and collapsed during a game of ring-around-the-rosy.
http://www.komotv.com/news/national/13864842.html
 
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - A baby sitter was charged with the murder of a toddler who police said was fatally injured when she swung him around in a sleeping bag for fun and his head smacked a door frame.

Police re-arrested 25-year-old Yalines Torres late Wednesday, a day after she was released after posting bond on charges of risk of injury to a minor and reckless endangerment.

Torres was being held on $1 million bond on the new charge of capital felony murder and was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday, Sgt. Edward Yergeau said.

Torres was watching 19-month-old Elijah Gasque on Friday evening while his mother worked. According to a police report, Torres told Julie Adkins-Gasque that Elijah had a seizure and collapsed during a game of ring-around-the-rosy.
http://www.komotv.com/news/national/13864842.html

This is so sad.
 
I can totally see this being a fun game for a toddler boy. I don't understand her falling though and his head hitting the doorway TWICE. Maybe once, but twice? She's old enough to know what could happen as a result of that kind of play. :( That poor little boy. :(

This is a tough one. I wonder if she has any history of violence, drugs, alcohol or other type of abuse.....
 
I feel so sorry for Elijah and his mother. Torres would have been better off if she had told sleeping bag story to begin with. Honestly, I don't know what to believe.
 
hum. sounds a little weird to me. and it would be a scary experience for the little boy.
read the article. she made a lot of conflicting statements. she is where she needs to be until this all gets sorted out.

my understanding is the ring around the rosy was NOT when the sleeping bag was coming into play. that was earlier... when i was scanning the article. right?

first she says that her own kid hit him in the head with a toy xylophone or something. a toy instrument. then she had bundled the kid up, stuck him in a sleeping back, put him over her back, and ran through the apartment with him. during that run, she hit a door jam with her "bundle" that was him. twice. oh, and she swung him around in the air a couple of times, that might have injured him too. after that, they got him out, played ring around the rosy with him, and that was when he collapsed. now she is in jail.
 
I can totally see this being a fun game for a toddler boy. I don't understand her falling though and his head hitting the doorway TWICE. Maybe once, but twice? She's old enough to know what could happen as a result of that kind of play. :( That poor little boy. :(

This is a tough one. I wonder if she has any history of violence, drugs, alcohol or other type of abuse.....


What is terrifying is that I can totally see doing this myself, back when I used to babysit all the time. I think back to all the things that "could have" happened... but the kids ALWAYS had a BLAST at my house. I'd hate to go to prison for being a fun, attentive babysitter.

PS
But not lying about it. I wish she hadn't done that.
 
hum. sounds a little weird to me. and it would be a scary experience for the little boy.
read the article. she made a lot of conflicting statements. she is where she needs to be until this all gets sorted out.

my understanding is the ring around the rosy was NOT when the sleeping bag was coming into play. that was earlier... when i was scanning the article. right?

first she says that her own kid hit him in the head with a toy xylophone or something. a toy instrument. then she had bundled the kid up, stuck him in a sleeping back, put him over her back, and ran through the apartment with him. during that run, she hit a door jam with her "bundle" that was him. twice. oh, and she swung him around in the air a couple of times, that might have injured him too. after that, they got him out, played ring around the rosy with him, and that was when he collapsed. now she is in jail.


My son loved being swung around in a sleeping bag when he was a toddler! I did it many times, but the room where I was doing it was huge and no chance of hitting anything!
 
I know what you mean, Glitch and Linda. My kids needed and loved sensory activities like this. We had a big room and lots of pillows and sofa cushions all over. Sometimes if I didn't provide it, they'd seek out their own! My youngest was the worst. She would climb to the highest point in any room and fling herself off of dressers and file cabinets. :eek:

Is this inexperience or is it murder? I hope she tells the truth and the right justice is meted out whether she did this intentionally or not.
 
The whole story sounds like BS to me ... She IMO deliberately hit his head.
 
I've done similiar activities with my nieces and nephews and I just don't think her story adds up.

Why lie in the first place? And how in the heck did she fall so that his head hit the doorframe TWICE? That just doesn't make sense. I think it's more likely that she was actually swinging him around (which I've done before in a blanket) and didn't give herself enough clearance. But again, the twice thing is where I'm not sure.

It's just such a sad story.
 
You have to hit a kid pretty darn hard to cause a skull fracture. More so at that age than younger ages (he's 2 and a half - his little skull is getting bigger and has gone through quite a bit of growth. Kids go through quite a bit of growth before the age of 2). It takes a bit more effort. I think some sort of physical abuse probably occured in the home.

We see skull fractures a lot and they DO NOT always instantly cause death like this either. Think falling down stairs, falling from a height above the childs head onto a hard surface such as concrete (like off a porch), car wrecks. We see those with accidents a lot. While a skull fracture can be present with other stuff too (swelling, bleeding), you can have a kid who is OK with a skull fracture... and who is going to be just fine. We observe overnight, make sure the kid is neurologically intact, and send the kid on his or her way after about 24 hours of observation. Usually follow up is indicated in a few weeks. We send home specific instructions to bring back if certain things occur after the injury.

I just don't see the things SHE is describing causing death SO quickly either. He had to have had massive swelling OR bleeding or BOTH very quickly guys. This was a big bad brain injury. He had symptoms right away.

I think something happened that she is not describing.

Something is so not right here. WHY so many injuries to the head a short period of time as well? She is trying to cover with a story.
 
I can totally see this being a fun game for a toddler boy. I don't understand her falling though and his head hitting the doorway TWICE. Maybe once, but twice? She's old enough to know what could happen as a result of that kind of play. :( That poor little boy. :(

This is a tough one. I wonder if she has any history of violence, drugs, alcohol or other type of abuse.....

Maybe to cover for two different blows to the head.

I can't imagine her losing her balance and having the child hit the door frame hard enough for a skull fracture.

Since they've changed the charges from injury to a child to murder; they must have some evidence it wasn't just an accident.
 
I agree that they probably have test results showing something else than accidental. I don't buy the tripping and his head hitting the doorway TWICE either.

Poor baby.
 
I agree that they probably have test results showing something else than accidental. I don't buy the tripping and his head hitting the doorway TWICE either.

Poor baby.

If she swung too close to an open doorway, the momentum would have him smack the left side of the door frame and continue into the right side of the doorframe before her ability to bring him to a halt. Centrifugal force is pretty intense and certainly could cause serious damage.

Think of when you used to wing a yo yo around by it's string. When you simply threw the yo yo at your older brother, it would annoy him. When you swung it like that and it accidently hit him - it caused him to have a big knot on his head. Remember? I do. :eek:
 
This happened in the neighborhood where i work. On the news the Grandmother said that the doctor said the injuries were consistent with shaken baby syndrome. There were also bruises on the baby that looked like knuckle marks. I'm sure there's more to the story than what police are saying because in order to be charged with capital felony there has to be evidence that she intentionally hurt the child. Although in the police report they made public it only states that she changed her story several times because she was scared people would think she was a bad mother.

There's another rumor going around too that the girl's husband left her that day and she was destraut and took it out on the baby.
 
If she swung too close to an open doorway, the momentum would have him smack the left side of the door frame and continue into the right side of the doorframe before her ability to bring him to a halt. Centrifugal force is pretty intense and certainly could cause serious damage.

Think of when you used to wing a yo yo around by it's string. When you simply threw the yo yo at your older brother, it would annoy him. When you swung it like that and it accidently hit him - it caused him to have a big knot on his head. Remember? I do. :eek:

The article said after further questioning she said she had the bag on her back and was jogging through the doorway. Lost her balance. That's the kind of force I was talking about not causing a skull fracture. At high impact the police would be able to see some damaged door molding there. Wood is a "giving" material as opposed to metal or concrete.

Let's see, and then there was the lethal xylophone, and then the high impact game of ring-around-the rosey. she seems to have changed her story alot.
 
Going through one doorway, Torres lost her balance and the bag struck the door frame twice, police said. When she opened the bag, Elijah was pale and not breathing, according to the police report.

I don't buy that a toddler can bounce from one side of the door to the next just by going through a doorway and losing your balance. It didn't say she was swinging him at this point either. Once, yeah. Twice, uh-uh.

If it's a Fisher-Price xylophone, that would have to be one hard hit. :(

italianchica, thanks for the local scoop.
 
we have one of those taximom! rounded off and they couldn't cause a skull fracture unless i was doing some major wrestling moves with it. another small child of a comparable age couldn't do it on accident, that is for sure.
 

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