A Baltimore County grand jury indicted two people on Monday in connection with the death of their one-month-old son in July, Baltimore County police said.
Police said Eugene Joseph Buchta, 25, of the 2800 block of Harford Road in Fallston and Rachael Anne Johnson, 25, of the 200 block of Patapsco Avenue in Dundalk, are facing first-degree child abuse and related charges.
Police said an investigation indicated that at about 10 p.m. July 2 , Buchta gave the infant a bath and then left him unsupervised. When he returned, police said, the child was submerged.
Police said Buchta removed the infant from the water and noticed the water was hot. Buchta and Johnson decided to apply ointment to the infant instead of taking him to the hospital, police said, adding that the child became unresponsive at about 7 p.m. that night.
Authorities said Baltimore County police and fire units arrived at an apartment in the 1800 block of Marshall Road in Dundalk after receiving a report of a one-month-old child who was unconscious and not breathing.
Police said the infant was transported to the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
Police said an autopsy conducted by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner concluded that the infant’s cause of death was complication of thermal injuries. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled the manner of death as a homicide.
— Pierce Jaffri