3 months ago
KSDK -- Prosecutors charged a Granite City couple with killing their three-month old baby.
22-year-old Donald Miller and 20-year-old Heather Smith are both charged with first degree murder and aggravated battery to a child.
On October 26, 2009 at approximately 4:00 a.m. Madison County Sheriff's Deputies responded to 605 Chouteau Avenue in Granite City in response to a 911 call of a deceased infant. The infant was named Ashton Miller.
Deputies and the Madison County Coroner's Office initiated an investigation into the death.
An autopsy revealed that the infant died as a result of suffocation. The forensic pathologist conducting the autopsy discovered and documented multiple bruises on the body of the infant at the time of the examination.
Prosecutors allege that Donald Miller and Heather Smith intentionally put the baby face down to sleep for the evening on a couch, knowing doing so could cause the child's death. They also accuse Miller and Smith of hitting the baby from July 10 until the child's death. Lenny Parker lives across the street from where the child died. Empty now, he says the home was rented by relatives of the child's father.
The night the three month old died, he said Donald Miller's brother in-law told him he had warned the young couple earlier in the week about laying child face down.
"Just kept saying, 'Don't lay him there don't lay him there.' Over and over," said Parker. "He was just freaking out."
The Sheriff's Department says and that warning, coupled with the allegations of abuse, is what elevates the crime to charges of murder.
"Had this been a normal child that rolled over on its belly and suffocated, we wouldn't be looking at the situation we're looking at currently," says Lieutenant Mike Dixson with the Madison County Sheriff's Department. "That is not what this is. This is a situation in which this child had been abused and in the eyes of the state's attorney neglected," says Dixson.
Parkers says the three month old was in the care of Miller's sister and brother-in-law until he and Smith were forced to move in with them after losing their apartment.
Details of the charges against them are detailed in the documents below:
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