(Image: Screenshot/YouTube)
This will probably be the most disturbing story you read all week, and it keeps getting progressively worse.
A 62-year-old Florida woman left her three children -- ages 6, 3, and 13 days old -- inside her minivan with the windows up and the car turned off so that she could run her errands.
While Kathleen Steele was inside a cell phone repair store, her 6-year-old son “pummeled” his 13-day-old baby sister to death. The boy told Pinellas County Sheriffs that the baby was fussing and he wanted to calm her down, so he proceeded to slam the infant into the ceiling of the minivan, after which he began to “pummel” his sister.
“It was one of the worst things I've ever seen, especially (for) a 13-day-old,” said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. “Her face had just been pummeled.”
When Steele was done with the 38-minute visit to the cell phone store, she acted like nothing had happened. Instead of getting medical attention for her newborn baby, Steele decided that she needed to make a stop before heading home.
According to the Tampa Bay Times:
Kathleen Bridget Steele was pronounced dead Monday evening at St. Petersburg General Hospital. But investigators believe the infant died hours before that, in the minivan.
When Steele returned to the minivan, deputies said, the 6-year-old tried to tell her something was wrong with his sister. "It's serious," the boy said.
The mother disregarded him, the sheriff said. She stopped at another business, then drove to their rented home in North Reddington Beach. That's when the mother first noticed the infant's injuries, deputies said.
Even when Steele arrived at her residence with her children, she didn’t call 911. Instead, she called her neighbor, who is a nurse, and the neighbor called 911 when they clearly saw the state of the child. The neighbor performed CPR on the infant until the paramedics arrived on the scene.
"Instead of calling 911, Steele called a neighbor, a nurse," Gualtieri said. "(The nurse) recognized the infant was deceased."
If you’re wondering about the age of the mother, Steele appeared with her late husband on a 2009 episode of the reality TV show "I’m Pregnant and 55 Years Old."
Steele’s husband died of cancer in 2011 at the age of 66. Her two youngest children were conceived through artificial insemination using her dead husband’s frozen sperm.
Unfortunately this was not the first time the infant had been in the hospital. Ten days earlier, when the infant was just three days old, the baby was taken to the hospital for head trauma when Steele had dropped her while the child was in a carseat.
The Tampa Bay Times also reported:
Steele told deputies that she put the baby in a car carrier, but she tripped going down the stairs and the baby tumbled out and struck her head — three days after birth.
The baby was taken to Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, where she was diagnosed with minor bleeding in the brain and stayed for two nights. A report was made to the child abuse hotline.
Steele was scheduled to be evaluated by investigators on Aug. 1. But she canceled and rescheduled for this Wednesday — two days after her baby would die.
Investigators interviewed the mother Monday night. The sheriff said during the first hour, Steele never asked about her baby girl. She seemed "aloof" and said this:
"I guess I have to plan a funeral."
Steele was arrested and is being charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child. The 6-year-old boy is not facing any charges.
The two surviving children are now in foster care.