A mother in Missouri faces criminal charges for mistakenly placing her 1-month-old baby in an oven instead of a crib, officials said.
Mariah Thomas of Kansas City was charged with endangering the welfare of a child on Saturday after Kansas City police officers responded to her home the day before for reports of an infant not breathing.
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Police and EMS personnel found the 1-month-old unresponsive with burn marks on her body. The child was pronounced dead at the scene, NBC affiliate KSHB-TV reported.
The child's grandfather told investigators that at around 1 p.m. Thomas called him alleging something was wrong with the baby. When he arrived at the home he smelled smoke inside the residence and then found the infant deceased in her crib.
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He then told detectives Thomas had told him she "was putting her child down for a nap, and accidentally placed the child in the oven instead of the crib,” court records show.
"We acknowledge the gruesome nature of this tragedy and our hearts are weighted by the loss of this precious life. We trust the criminal justice system to respond appropriately to these awful circumstances," Jackson County Prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker said in a statement.
Child endangerment is considered a class A felony in Missouri, which can carry a prison sentence of 10-30 years.
