March 2022 | Page 12 of 29 | My Crime Library

Deangelo Hawkins Charged With Childs Murder

Deangelo Hawkins has now been charged with the murder of four year old Jaice Dupont after the little boy passed away. According to police reports Deangelo Hawkins was left home alone with Jaice Dupont and he would later call 911 as the boy was unresponsive. Jaice Dupont was rushed to the hospital with a severe injury to his head. Unfortunately Jaice Dupont would pass away five days later. Deangelo Hawkins who attempted to tell police that the child fell and hit his head was initially charged with assault however the charges were upgraded to murder once the little boy died. There was also previously medical incidents with Jaice Dupont who suffered abdominal injuries and broken ribs.

Deangelo Hawkins who is facing other charges that include assault, domestic violence and criminal sexual conduct on a different incident was also arrested on probation violations and many are wondering why he was out on bond and why a violent felon was left alone with a child.

Deangelo Hawkins More News

When Deangelo Hawkins was charged with first-degree child abuse last week, it was just the latest in his legal trouble.

He was out on personal bond from Wayne County. Now his case is getting new scrutiny. The prosecutor calls that early release “wholly inadequate.”

Deangelo Hawkins violated probation on an earlier conviction of assault. Plus, he was facing new charges of assault, domestic violence and criminal sexual conduct, all with the same victim.

During two years with the pandemic, judges have had to balance a backlogged system, backlogged jails with COVID-19 spreading and releasing people to ease the pressure.

“We all point our fingers when a situation goes bad like this, but we have to remember the dozens, maybe hundreds of other cases where people have done very well on bond and we’re glad that they haven’t been detained unnecessarily,” Hawkins’ defense attorney Sanford Schulman told 7 Action News.

The Wayne County prosecutor argued against the personal bond and asked for house arrest. Both were denied by Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Qiana Lillard.

Schulman says the Wayne County charges are with Hawkins’ wife with whom he lived off and on, and they have two children together.

On March 5, Deangelo Hawkins was sharing an apartment in Wixom with a girlfriend and babysitting her 4-year-old son Jaice Dupont alone when he called 911. The toddler had severe head injuries and died five days later.

Wixom police say Hawkins lied and said the injury was a simple accident. They are investigating previous injuries of broken ribs and stomach trauma with the toddler and once that investigation is complete, murder charges could be issued against Hawkins. Police say the boy’s mother is cooperating.

In June of 2020, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Lillard allowed Hawkins out of jail early on a personal bond.

“The vast majority of cases are successful wherever defendants are released and are not held for months and months, even years,” Schulman said.

A hearing in the Wayne County case is set for Wednesday morning before a different Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Kevin Cox

Hawkins remains in the Oakland County Jail on $1 million bond.

The full statement from the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office:

Defendant Hawkins pleaded guilty to Felonious Assault in June 2019 and was placed on probation. In December 2019 he was charged with very serious charges involving the same victim. This caused the probation violation. The bond set in the new case was wholly inadequate.
The original bond for the December 2019 case was set at the Arraignment on the Warrant on December 7, 2019, where the defendant received a $300,000/10% with GPS tether. A bond hearing was held on March 6, 2020, before Judge Qiana Lillard and was denied prior to COVID shutdowns. A second bond hearing was held on June 26, 2020. Our position was that due to the serious charges involving the same victim Defendant Hawkins should not be allowed to have a bond reduction even during COVID-19. Judge Lillard granted a reduction to $5000 personal bond with GPS tether. WCPO objected to this. Once the bond reduction was granted it is important to note that WCPO asked that the defendant at least be placed under house arrest, but the Court denied the request.
Even taking Covid shutdown into consideration, in a case as serious as this, at the very least house arrest should have been a condition of bond.
– Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office

https://www.wxyz.com/news/releasing-dangerous-convicts-due-to-covid-backlogs-new-case-getting-new-scrutiny

Gerald Oglesby Murders Five Year Old Son

Gerald Oglesby has been arrested in Nevada for the murder of his five year old son. According to police reports Gerald Oglesby would eventually call 911 and report that his son was unresponsive. When ambulance attendants arrived at the scene they found the boy not breathing with bruising on his head and torso. Ambulance attendants were unable to save the child. Eventually Gerald Oglesby would admit his son stopped breathing sometime before he called 911. Gerald Oglesby would also admit that he struck his boy with an electrical cord and realized he may have hit the child to hard as the boy started to vomit and eventual stop breathing. Gerald Oglesby who was awarded custody of the child a month ago has been arrested and charged with murder.

Gerald Oglesby More News

A father reportedly whipped his 5-year-old son with a cable box cord before the boy’s death and waited 13 minutes after his son stopped breathing before calling police, according to an arrest report from Henderson Police.

Gerald Oglesby was arrested March 16 and booked on a murder charge in connection with his 5-year-old son’s death. According to the arrest report, Oglesby said he whipped his son as a form of discipline for “back talking.”

Oglesby called 911 around 1:30 a.m. March 16, saying his son was unresponsive. Oglesby reportedly made a comment to dispatch that “he didn’t want to flee the scene” and “they needed to get someone (first responders) there.”

Oglesby said the last time the child was breathing was 13 minutes prior to the 911 call.

Police observed visible injuries to head and torso of child and the child was determined dead on scene. A neighbor said she heard loud noises, “believed it was a body being thrown onto the ground in apartment” and said the thumping continued for two hours. The neighbor said she tried to contact the resident in the apartment but no one answered and she didn’t call 911, the report said.

Oglesby told police he was awarded custody of his son in Feb. 2021. Oglesby told police he started using physical discipline around that same time, and said he was “forced” to discipline his son by whipping him with a phone charging cord in Dec. 2021 because he started “back talking.”

On March 15, Oglesby said he saw his child watching a TV show he wasn’t supposed to be watching. Oglesby said the child “back talked” him and Oglesby used the cord on the cable box to whip him, splitting the child’s chin open, the report said. Oglesby reportedly whipped the child again later that night because the child didn’t want to go to bed, the report said. Oglesby also hit the child in the abdomen with a slipper, the arrest report said.

At this point Oglesby said he knew he hit the child too hard, the arrest report said. Oglesby said the child wasn’t acting normal and laid down. Shortly after, the child vomited, Oglesby said in the report.

Oglesby could tell something was wrong but didn’t want to call the police “because we would not understand his method of discipline,” the arrest report said.

Oglesby performed CPR but got no response, the report said. Oglesby said he realized the child was dead and texted the mother of the child “a couple of good pictures that were previously stored on his phone” before texting the sister that the boy died because he had whipped him too hard, the report said.

Oglesby then started smoking marijuana before calling 911, the report said. Oglesby said 911 dispatchers instructed him on how to do CPR, but he refused because he had already tried it and it didn’t work.

Court records show Oglesby’s next court appearance was set for March 21.

https://www.fox5vegas.com/2022/03/17/father-whipped-5-year-old-son-with-cord-waited-13-mins-call-911-arrest-report-says/

Connie Escamilla and Kylie Beasley Sentenced In Childs Murder

Connie Escamilla and Kylie Beasley have just been sentenced to 22 years to life for the murder of a three year old boy. Connie Escamilla who is the mother of the murdered child and her fiance Kylie Beasley would call 911 to report an unresponsive child. When the paramedics showed up they would find the three year old boy unresponsive with a series of injuries.

The child would be rushed to the hospital and die the next day from his injuries. The two women attempted to explain away the numerous injuries on the child that ranged from burns on his limbs, head trauma, broken bones and bruising to his internal organs. Connie Escamilla and Kylie Beasley would be arrested and charged with murder and child abuse. The pair would be convicted at trial and a judge would sentence the two to 22 years to life in State prison.

Connie Escamilla and Kylie Beasley More News

A Modesto mom and her fiancée were sentenced this month to 22 years to life in state prison for torturing and killing her 3-year-old son in 2017. Gilbert Escamilla, 3, was found with extensive injuries to his body when Modesto Police and medical personnel responded to a report of a child not breathing at the Emerald Pointe apartments on the 300 block of Standiford Avenue on March 1, 2017. The toddler was taken to Doctors Medical Center then flown to Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera for further treatment but died the next day.

Hospital personnel documented injuries including severe burn marks on his legs, bruising and abrasions over his entire body and various broken bones, according to a news release from the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office. Doctors also found internal damage consisting of bleeding on the brain, a bruised lung and bruised liver. Modesto Police arrested Connie Marie Escamilla, 29, and her fiancée Kylie Mykaela Ann Beasley, 25.

When detectives interviewed Connie Escamilla and Beasley in separate rooms, both claimed Gilbert suffered some of the injuries during a car accident. When investigators pressed them for specifics, each was inconsistent with the other about when the crash occurred and there were no law enforcement or other records to back it up, according to the news release.

The pair further blamed his severe leg burns on hot water spilling on him, but doctors determined that could not have caused the injuries they saw. Additional excuses included falling off his bed, blaming an unknown male whom law enforcement was never able to locate and negligence by the medical professionals who administered CPR to the unresponsive child.

When told that Gilbert had died, both Connie Escamilla and Beasley admitted to being untruthful and blamed the other for the child’s injuries and death, according to prosecutors.

In December, Escamilla and Beasley each pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree murder and one count of torture and waived two years of earned custody credits.

On March 9, both were sentenced by Judge Linda McFadden to serve 15 years to life for the murder charge plus an additional seven years for the torture count to run consecutively.

Deputy District Attorney Erin Schwartz, who prosecuted the case, said no one attended the sentencing to give victim impact statements on behalf of Gilbert. She said the boy’s father was never in the picture and a step-grandmother attended hearings in the early stages but hadn’t come in years.

At the time of Gilbert’s death, he had a 7-year-old half-sister who was taken by child protective services. Schwartz said the child was adopted by “a really wonderful family.” She said they were informed of the sentencing but are very protective of their daughter and declined to give statements.

https://www.modbee.com/news/local/crime/article259571154.html

Brook Lank Charged In Anthony Lofton Murder

Brook Lank is a woman from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania who has been charged with the murder of her boyfriend Anthony Lofton. According to police reports Brook Lank and Anthony Lofton were inside of a car on the way to a drug deal when an argument broke out. Well Brook Lank would pull out a gun and fatally shoot Anthony Lofton in the head. Brook Lank would later drop off her boyfriend’s body in a back alley before taking off in the vehicle. When Brook Lank was arrested she would admit to the shooting and told investigators that she did a poor job of cleaning the car. Brook Lank has been charged with charged with individual counts of criminal homicide and abuse of a corpse

Brook Lank More News

A Pittsburgh woman was charged Monday with killing her boyfriend and dumping his body in a McKees Rocks alleyway, police said.

Brook Lank, 24, is charged with criminal homicide and abuse of a corpse in the killing of 22-year-old Anthony Lofton, also of Pittsburgh.

Mr. Lofton was found dead in an alleyway behind a residence in the 300 block of Russellwood Avenue on Sunday morning, according to police and the county medical examiner. Police said he had been shot in the head and was pronounced dead at the scene.

According to a criminal complaint, Ms. Lank told police that she shot Mr. Lofton in the head while she was driving a Ford Taurus. Mr. Lofton was in the passenger’s seat.

The couple had been fighting, the complaint said, and Ms. Lank told police Mr. Lofton threatened her with a gun and took her car the night before the homicide.

Ms. Lank said Mr. Lofton had asked her Sunday to drive to McKeesport so he could make a drug deal, but during the drive, the couple began to fight.

According to the complaint, Ms. Lank said she reached for Mr. Lofton’s gun and shot him in the head. When she noticed he was still breathing, she shot him two more times.

Ms. Lank told police she panicked and threw the gun out the window. She then dumped Mr. Lofton’s body in Derby Alley.

“I obviously didn’t do a very good job,” Ms. Lank told police about her attempt to clean up the evidence.

According to the complaint, Germell Phillips helped Ms. Lank dump Mr. Lofton’s body. Mr. Phillips told police that Ms. Lank called him to “help her and go for a ride.” While in the vehicle, Mr. Phillips said he thought Mr. Lofton was asleep until Ms. Lank asked him to move his body.

Mr. Phillips said Ms. Lank told him Mr. Lofton had threatened her with a gun, and that she had to shoot him. Mr. Phillips has not been charged with a crime.

Ms. Lank was arrested Monday and is being held in the Allegheny County Jail.

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2022/03/15/mckees-rocks-homicide-killing-pittsburgh-woman-arrested-brook-lank-derby-alley/stories/202203150080

Melynie Curtis Pleads Guilty to 5 YR’s Old Murder

Melynie Curtis has plead no contest to the murder of her five year old stepson’s murder. According to court documents Melynie Curtis would strangle the five year old boy. When doctors were performing the autopsy on the child they found a series of injuries that showed that the little boy had been abused for sometime. By pleading no contest Melynie Curtis, who is from Sante Fe New Mexico, would receive a prison sentence of thirty years in which she will have to serve twenty five years in prison.

Melynie Curtis More News

A Santa Fe woman has been sentenced to 25 years behind bars for the strangulation death of her 5-year-old stepson. Melynie Curtis pleaded no contest Tuesday to second-degree murder and child abuse.

After the boy’s death in September of 2018, doctors also found a pattern of bruises, a broken nose, and injuries to his genitals indicating ongoing abuse. Investigators say the boy had clearly been tortured.

Curtis has two children of her own, one of which she gave birth to just weeks before her stepson’s murder. Under the plea deal, Curtis will serve 25 of the 30 years she faced.

https://www.krqe.com/news/crime/santa-fe-woman-pleads-no-contest-to-stepson-murder/

Melynie Curtis Other News

More than three years after she was accused of fatally strangling her 5-year-old stepson, Melynie Curtis pleaded no contest Tuesday to charges of second-degree murder and child abuse resulting in great bodily harm.

Her plea agreement with prosecutors in the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office calls for her to serve a 25-year prison sentence for Jayden Curtis’ death. In exchange for her plea, the remaining charges against her in a nine-count amended indictment were dismissed.

The murder and child abuse charges are classified as serious violent offenses, so Melynie Tyalan Curtis will be required to serve at least 85 percent of her sentence and won’t be eligible to accrue day-for-day credits for good behavior to reduce her prison time beyond 15 percent.

Jayden’s biological mother, Cristina Cowboy, sobbed on the witness stand Tuesday as she testified about the day she gave birth to the boy and the effect his death has had on her.

“As a mother, we are supposed to protect our children from bad people and bad things,” she said, her voice choked with tears. “As a mother, I will never heal from this. I am emotionally, mentally and physically damaged.”

“This case is a tragedy on so many levels, I don’t know that I can even address them all,” state District Judge T. Glenn Ellington said before remanding Curtis — who had been on house arrest while awaiting trial — into police custody.

“This abuse is multigenerational,” the judge said, noting he’d come to know her family history over the years.

“Ms. Curtis herself had been abused as a child and became a mother very young and had some difficulties with that,” Ellington said.

“I don’t pretend to understand the underlying causes or the solutions,” the judge said. “All that is before me is a criminal case that has its own built-in resolution.”

But, Ellington continued, “we know a few things, and that is that child abuse of this nature, unfortunately, has a bad habit of repeating itself generation to generation unless there is intervention … to keep the pattern from repeating.”

Curtis was arrested in September 2018 after medical personnel told police officers her story that Jayden had accidentally drowned in a tub was inconsistent with his injuries.

The boy’s hair and clothes were dry when paramedics responded to her 911 call, according to a Santa Fe Police Department report, and he had no water in his lungs. Curtis had said water was coming from his nose and mouth when she pulled him out of the tub.

The report said Curtis — who had her first baby at 14 and had just given birth to her third child weeks before the boy’s death — later told investigators she had choked Jayden, her husband’s son from another relationship, but hadn’t meant to do it “that hard.”

She was at home caring for Jayden, her newborn and her 19-month-old son when the incident occurred, documents said, while her 6-year-old son from a previous relationship was with his maternal grandmother.

Deputy District Attorney Haley Murphy said Tuesday an investigation revealed Curtis had tortured the boy before strangling him, including striking him all over his body with an object and injuring his genitals.

Emergency responders who were dispatched to the family’s home were able to revive Jayden temporarily, reports said, and he was taken to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center before being airlifted to University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque. His parents, Royce Curtis and Cowboy, took him off life support a few days later, after hospital staff declared him brain dead.

Melynie Curtis, 23, sat silently during the hearing, speaking only when Ellington asked her direct questions about whether she understood her rights and the consequences of the plea agreement.

Her defense team — led by attorney Todd Farkas — had approached her case from several angles.

Farkas first raised concerns about whether she was competent to stand trial. After she was found competent, he challenged the validity of her indictment, saying prosecutors had violated some rules of the grand jury process.

He didn’t put on a presentation or call any witnesses during her hearing Tuesday.

Ellington granted one request from Farkas; the judge allowed Curtis to remove her jewelry so it could be given to her family before she was taken into custody.

https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/woman-receives-25-year-sentence-after-no-contest-plea-in-5-year-old-stepsons-strangulation/article_1172d672-a473-11ec-8c16-870ec30b8a41.html