Man accused of smoking weed, calling sex line while infant son died
By Emily Kaiser in Crime
Wed., Sep. 2 2009 @ 8:36AM
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Willie Ervin Franklin III was charged Tuesday, just four days after his 4-month-old son was found in his apartment complex not breathing.
Police responded to a call of a baby not breathing. When they arrived, a neighbor was performing CPR on the infant. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
When questioned, Franklin gave a long list of explainations and situations that led to the incident. Police saw a bruise on the baby's head and a small cut on his face.
He first told the baby's mother that he woke up and found the baby not breathing.
From the Star Tribune:
Franklin first told police that he had been home alone with his son all morning after the baby's mother left the apartment. He told police various accounts, and said he did not know what happened other than that he was feeding the baby and the baby went unconscious.Police say he finally admitted that his son had been crying and it "pissed him off" so he threw a baby bottle and hit his son in the head. When his crying got worse, he put him facedown on a pillow and covered him with a quilt.
After he was taken into custody, Franklin again gave conflicting versions of events -- first that he had no idea what happened, then that he had been taking his son to day care when he tripped, causing the baby to fall and hit his head.
Franklin told police he was afraid that child protection authorities would get involved, so he went back to the apartment, took off his son's outfit and buried it. He then recanted that story and said the boy hit his head when he fell from the couch to the carpeted floor.
He walked into his bedroom, smoked weed and called a sex chat line. Thirty minutes later he returned to his son and found him not breathing.
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