An Iowa man arrested for allegedly sitting on a toddler and smothering him to death
An Iowa man is under arrest and facing first-degree murder charges for the gruesome killing of a toddler that he allegedly sat on and suffocated to death.
An Iowa man is under arrest and facing first-degree murder charges for the gruesome killing of a toddler that he allegedly sat on and suffocated to death, the Des Moines Register reports.
Larry Darnell Murphy, 31, was arrested Friday and is being held on a million-dollar bond after being charged with child endangerment as well as the first-degree murder charges in the death of 2-year-old Oakland Oburu, his girlfriend’s son.
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Murphy was reportedly the primary disciplinarian of the tot because the child’s mother has cerebral palsy.
On Friday, Murphy reportedly got angered because the child took his cellphone and as punishment the reported 6 feet tall and 160 pounds man laid the child on a bed and sat on him for “about 20 seconds,” the mother said, according to police.
“She said her son initially was moaning during this and then became quiet,” the criminal complaint states. “She assumed (Oburu) was going to go back to sleep as Larry covered him up with the bed comforter and left the room to pay their motel rent.”
For the past six weeks, the family had been living at the American Inn motel at 2717 S. 24th St., according to a criminal complaint filed by Council Bluffs police.
According to reports, the mother heard her son wheezing, but her physical condition restricted her from checking on him.
The child reportedly laid quiet on the bed and 20 minutes after Murphy sat on him, he checked on the child who was laying under a blanket and found him not breathing and unresponsive, according to reports.
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Murphy then called his sister, who drove from Bellevue, Nebraska, to assist Murphy and take the child to a local hospital, according to a news release from the Council Bluffs Police Department.
They called 911 on their way to the emergency room and were ordered to stop driving so that emergency responders could meet them. They reportedly stopped at the Casey’s General Store at 510 23rd Ave. where an ambulance met up with them, court records show.
The toddler was taken to Jennie Edmundson Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“During the examination at the hospital, it appeared that (the victim) had no obvious trauma to him or any large wounds,” the complaint states. “(The doctor) did notice that O.O. had subconjunctival hemorrhage in both eyes which is a possible sign from being asphyxiated.”
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