On Wednesday, Brittany Marie Wiest was arrested in Tennessee on multiple felony murder charges after police found her two-month-old infant dead in her home back in April. An autopsy of her son, Anakin Leroy-Michael Wiest, revealed that he died from dehydration and starvation.
At the time of Wiest’s arrest, according to a police report, she was 24-weeks pregnant with a second child and living with her boyfriend, Michael Withers. News channel five reported that the investigation was presented to the Rutherford County Grand Jury Monday leading to the indictments for felony murder, aggravated child abuse, and aggravated child neglect. Wiest’s bond was set at $100,000.
Detectives said Brittany Marie Wiest was arrested Wednesday and detained at the Rutherford County Detention Center.
The investigation was presented to the Rutherford County Grand Jury Monday leading to the indictments for felony murder, aggravated child abuse, and aggravated child neglect.
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It happened April 8, 2014, when Smyrna Police officers found Anakin Leroy-Michael Wiest, age two months, deceased and extremely underweight at Village Crest Apartments on Needham Drive.
The mother, Brittany Marie Wiest, and her boyfriend, Michael Withers, were also found inside the apartment.
An autopsy determined the infant’s death was caused by starvation and dehydration, making the manner of death homicide, according to officials.
Bond for Brittany Marie Wiest was set at $100,000. Police said she was 24 weeks pregnant with another child at the time of her arrest.
Unfortunately, according to the National Institute of Health, in the United States eight in every 100,000 newborns die from infanticide and usually the perpetrator is the victim’s parent or step parent. Although most people agree that this horrific, new findings from pro-life groups show that some college students support post-birth abortion and suggest that children up to 4 or 5-years-old can also be killed, because they are not yet “self aware.”
Tragically, death by starvation and dehydration is particularly inhumane because it is a slow and agonizing process. Bobby Schinder, the brother of Terri Schiavo, described his sister’s condition in her final days after the court ordered that her feeding tube be removed.
He said, “I watched my own sister, Terri Schiavo, anguish through almost two weeks without food or water and there are no words that can properly describe the inhumanity. In her last days, we would not permit our mother to visit Terri, in an effort to spare her additional torment, as blood pooled in Terri’s eyes, and her skin and lips were terribly cracked because her tissues were lacking any moisture. Terri’s body turned different colors of blue and yellow and her breathing became so rapid, it was as if she was outside sprinting. I could go on.”
As LifeNews previously reported, Mark Harrington, the director of Created Equal, expounded on our society’s growing acceptance of infanticide. He said, “We encounter people who think it is morally acceptable to kill babies after birth on a regular basis at almost every campus we visit. While this viewpoint is still seen as shocking by most people, it is becoming increasingly popular.”
He concluded, “This is the whole problem with devaluing human life at any stage—it will naturally grow to include other groups of humans; in this case, born humans as well as preborn humans,” Harrington said. “[I] talked with one young man at the University of Minnesota who thought it was alright to kill children if they were under the age of 5 years old, as he did not consider them persons until that age.”
