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BEAVER — A Beaver woman has been arrested and accused of causing the death of her infant child due to vigorous shaking.
Tawna Steed, 32, was booked into the Beaver County Jail on Monday for investigation of aggravated murder.
The Beaver County Sheriff's Office was originally called to Steed's apartment on Sept. 19 on a report of a 23-day-old boy not breathing. The infant was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.
On Oct. 12, the Utah State Medical Examiner's Office ruled the infant's manner of death to be homicide, noting that the baby had "multiple healing rib fractures" from at least two separate incidents, as well as "two separate brain hemorrhages, which would have occurred by someone shaking the infant or some other type of blunt force trauma causing death," according to a police booking affidavit.
When interviewing the boy's parents on Monday, the arresting deputy noted that the father was very emotional during the interview after being told about the medical examiner's report, while the mother, Steed, "never cried or became upset during the interview" and eventually asked for an attorney, the affidavit states.
Detectives then interviewed the father again and told him more details about his son's injuries. He again became very emotional and admitted he had seen Steed shake the infant on two separate occasions, the affidavit says. On one occasion, he heard the infant crying and found Steed "shaking the baby vigorously and grabbing it tightly across the chest with her two hands. Tawna was yelling (for the) 'stupid baby to stop crying,'" according to the affidavit.
The father said he yelled at Steed to stop, took the child away from her and left their apartment to go to his parents' house. This allegedly happened on two separate occasions.
