Teen parents living in Arkansas were arrested after their 15 day old baby was found sleeping on a blood soaked mattress, the result of 100 rat bites. Erica Shyrock, 19, and Charles Elliott, 18, charged with child endangerment. Police searched couple’s Arkansas home and found a crib with bloody rat paw prints, a baby’s blood-soaked hat, a blanket with bloodstains on it and rat feces.
A teenage couple from Arkansas have been arrested after police say their newborn daughter was found covered in blood and suffering from up to 100 rat bites all over her body, including a wound on her head through which the baby’s skull was visible.
Erica Shyrock, 19, and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Charles Elliott, were taken into police custody in Magnolia on Sunday and charged with first-degree endangering the welfare of a minor.
According to a graphic arrest affidavit, the case began unfolding at around 11.30am Sunday when police were summoned to Magnolia Regional Medical Center about a baby that had been bitten by rats.
The worst injury was an inch-wide gash on the baby’s forehead that was so deep it exposed a portion of her skull, the affidavit stated, according to a report by ArkansasMatters.com.
When interviewed by police, Shyrock, who has been dating Elliott since 2015, recounted how she put her daughter to sleep at around 5.30am in her bassinet placed next to the parents’ bed and was awakened by her screams two hours later.
When the 19-year-old mom looked in the crib, she said she found her baby girl covered in blood. Elliott, who was interviewed separately, also told police he saw bloody rat footprints in the crib.
Both parents said they were aware there their home was infested with rats but failed to address the problem.
The couple both admitted to police that they knew they had a severe rat problem but that they had done nothing to solve the problem. Elliot had called his mother and said the baby had been bitten by a mouse and that he was afraid he would lose his baby. The grandmother told him to get the baby to the hospital, but they waited 1 1/2 hours when Elliot’s mother arrived before seeking medical attention for the baby.
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