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Woman indicted for baby's injuries
By joe gorman
youngstown
A Mahoning County grand jury has indicted a Cambridge Street woman on charges that she caused her baby to be sent to a hospital.
Julie Keyes, 27, was indicted Thursday on two counts of endan- gering children and a count of felonious assault.
Detectives said this week they have been talking to witnesses since a 4-month-old boy was taken to the Boardman Campus of Akron Children’s Hospital on July 9 by his father. The baby was transferred to the main campus that night and has been in Akron since.
Hospital workers told police the baby’s father told them he was worried about his son after he had received several text messages from Keyes, the baby’s mother, saying she could not handle the baby’s crying, a police report said.
The father then told hospital staff that he went to the South Side home and found the mother passed out and the baby on the floor, according to the report.
Police were called, and a social worker told an officer it appeared the mother was drunk, reports said. The officer said he spoke to the mother, who told him she was taking a shower and she placed the baby in a car seat without buckling him in and when she got out of the shower, the boy was out of his seat, reports said.
Hospital staff, however, told the officer the baby had two separate injuries to his brain that could not have come from falling out of a car seat.
The officer who spoke to the mother wrote in his report that she appeared to be under the influence of something and did not understand how serious the injuries to her son were. The officer wrote that her eyes were bloodshot, her speech was slurred and she smelled of alcohol.
Keyes seemed to not understand what was going on and asked several times when she could go home with her son, reports said.
According to Mahoning County jail records, Keyes has yet to be taken into custody.