Minnesota Man Flings ‘Fussy’ 5-Week-Old Baby 12 Feet Across The Room, Baby Dies Of Fatal Head Injuries


A Minnesota Man threw his 5-week-old daughter from his living room into the kitchen because she was fussy, the Washington Post is reporting.

John Peterson, who has been charged with second-degree murder, lied to investigators about how his daughter died. The 33-year-old man initially told them the child stopped breathing after being “fussy.” According to him, the baby was lying on a blanket on the floor, when she began struggling with her breathing and gasping.

He said he called his wife for help, who rushed back home and began performing CPR on the little girl. He later said that his daughter hit her forehead after he accidentally dropped her. Peterson said she “landed on her back and skidded across the floor” before hitting her head against the cupboards.

According to Kare11 News, emergency responders to the Peterson residence in Palisade, Minnesota, a small town 130 miles north of Minneapolis, were told by the baby’s mother that she was having breathing problems. The first responders had also performed CPR on the little girl at the scene.

However, they were unable to get a pulse and took her away in an ambulance. The girl was transferred from the Riverwood Healthcare Center to Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. A doctor from the Midwest Children’s Resource Center, a department that specializes in child abuse, examined the baby and said her injuries were not caused by any explanation given.

Peterson told a different lie to authorities who had been called in. He said he mistakenly dropped his daughter after she began flailing in his arms. He said the girl hit her head on the sink before bouncing off and hitting her head underneath the sink. According to him, his daughter was gasping for air when he picked her up from the ground. When investigators insisted that his explanation did not tally with the girl’s injuries. A lodged complaint showed that he gave a different account again.

mother-grieves-for-baby-killed-by-father
[Image by Sol Stock/iStock]

“Everything happened so fast and he was trying to prevent her from hitting the floor and because he was trying to catch her, it was like he pushed and tried to grab her at the same time and she hit the ground and it was ugly.”

The 33-year-old man later admitted that he became frustrated when his daughter started screaming and crying. John Peterson confessed that he lost his temper and threw the infant into the kitchen from the living room.

He said he made up the story because he was “very scared.”

The little child was placed on child support and died three days later of significant head injuries.

According to the Brainer Dispatch, Peterson was charged last Wednesday on a solitary count of felony murder. Judge Earl Maus set his bail at $1 million without conditions and $250,000 with conditions. Peterson is not allowed to leave the state and is expected to make all future court appearances.

His next court appearance has been penciled for January 30, 2017.

Second-degree murder in Minnesota is punishable by at least 40 years in Minnesota.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1,640 children died because of ill treatment comprising of physical abuse and neglect in 2012. Seventy percent of those who died were less than 3-years-old.

This is not the first time that someone would violently throw a child away. In India, a jealous aunt also did the unthinkable and threw her 18-day-old nephew from the window of a third-story hospital. The incident was caught on close circuit cameras.

[Image by Julieanne Birch/iStock Photo]
[Image by Julieanne Birch/iStock]

The baby boy had been taken by his aunt to the hospital to treat septicaemia, an infection caused by too much bacteria in the bloodstream. The CCTV footage shows the aunt walking to a 30-foot high balcony with the child in her arms and leaving without the baby in sight.

The aunt said she did it because she had been ridiculed constantly for not having a boy child. She said a voice told her to do it and she did.

“I have three daughters and not a day goes by that I am not bitterly teased that I cannot give birth to a boy. It just came to my mind and so I flung him off the balcony. I do not know why I did it. A voice told me to do it and I followed it.”

Luckily, the child survived because he landed on anti-monkey netting, safety nets fixed to buildings in order to avoid monkeys entering into premises. The hospital worker who found him said he was dangling from the net; his clothes caught in a jutting iron piece.

[Featured Image by Izzzy 71/Thinkstock]

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