Mom Smothers Her Toddler Son to Death, Then Kills Herself by Stepping in Front of a Semi

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Oct 23, 2014   |   3:49PM   |   Washington, DC

In a strange and bizarre infanticide case out of Ohio, a young mother smothered her toddler son to death and then took her own life a day later.

According to news reports, Kayelisa Martin took her own son’s life and, a day later was involved in an automobile accident. Strangely, she brought the body of her dead baby with her while she gave an accident report to police.

kayelisamartinMartin spoke to the police early in the day while holding her baby son’s body and, even though she had killed him the day before, she said nothing to officials about his death. Officers and paramedics did not notice that 14-month-old boy was dead as Martin carried body into police station to file a crash report.

Shortly thereafter, Martin’s father, who is a pastor, learned she had smothered her boy, Omoyele Gonzalez, the day before the crash. In the hours after the accident report police found the boy’s body and learned from her family that Martin was suicidal. They had noted marks on her arms from cutting herself.

Hours after Martin left the police station and while police and family attempted to sort out what was going on, she place the body of her infant son in bed and the young mother died after throwing herself in front of a tractor trailer.

Here’s more from the local newspaper:

Authorities say they didn’t know the toddler was dead as his mother, holding him, talked nonchalantly to police and paramedics investigating her car crash.

They also didn’t know, as she carried him swaddled in a blanket to the police department to provide a crash statement, that she had killed him.

Hours later and miles away, as the child’s grandparents, police and paramedics found his long-dead body in bed with no obvious signs of physical trauma, she fatally stepped in front of a moving truck on Interstate 77 — an attempt, police say, to end her own life.

Click here to sign up for daily pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com

“After an extensive investigation by my office and detectives from the Canton Police Department, we believe that this baby died from probable smothering at the hands of his mother, Kayelisa Martin, during the early hours of Aug. 7,” Stark County Coroner P.S. Murthy said Tuesday.

Omoyele N. Gonzalez, at 14 months old, may have been dead for nearly a day.

“The body undergoes changes over a generalized period of time based on environment, and we work in windows of time,” said Harry Campbell, Murthy’s chief investigator. “We believe that, given what we saw at the scene, that the child had been dead 12 to 18 hours or more.”

And, investigators believe, the 20-year-old mother considered suicide.

Capt. Dave Davis, who heads the Canton Police Department’s Detective bureau, said detectives believe that “immediately after the child was killed, his mother was looking for ways to end her own life. We have evidence that she called several other family members trying to obtain a firearm and was asking people if it would be fatal to jump off a bridge.”

Her own arms bore “superficial scratches,” evidence police believe were the result of an unsuccessful suicide attempt.