Mother of drowned toddler gets prison

Prosecutors say she left the 17-month-old boy unattended in a bathtub for at least 15 minutes.

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 26, 2003

LARGO -- A St. Petersburg mother whose 17-month-old son drowned after being left unattended in a tub for at least 15 minutes is headed to prison.

Bonnie Hyland, 23, pleaded no contest Monday to aggravated manslaughter of a child. A Pinellas-Pasco circuit judge sentenced her to 11/2 years in prison for the September 2000 death of son James. Prosecutors didn't view the death as a simple accident because Hyland had previously been warned by relatives about her habit of leaving the child unattended in the tub.

In a plea agreement with prosecutors, Hyland also received an 111/2-year suspended prison term and 17 years of probation. During probation, she cannot have unsupervised contact with any children.

Hyland, who wasn't charged until last summer, has been in jail about six months awaiting trial, so her sentence amounts to about a year in prison.

The sentence assures that Hyland will not have unsupervised contact with her two surviving children, who are now pre-schoolers, at least until they turn 18, said prosecutor Tim Hessinger.

A relative who now cares for the children could not be reached for comment.

"A lot of people have very divergent views on what she did," Hessinger said. "Some think what she did was mere negligence. We feel there was culpable negligence. But that's a very high standard to prove at trial. You have to prove a total disregard for the safety of others."

The prosecutor said that in offering the plea, his office also considered some mental health issues, including Hyland's low IQ. If convicted at trial, Hyland faced a maximum of 30 years in prison.

Police said Hyland left her son in the tub and went to wake up her husband on Sept. 25, 2000. They said she could hear James turning the faucets on and off as he played. Later, police said, she found the tub full and James floating face down. Most drowning deaths of children are judged by police and prosecutors to be accidents, not caused by preventable neglect. But Hyland was reckless, prosecutors said, because of previous warnings by relatives.

Laura Minor, Hyland's sister-in-law, told prosecutors she had previously gotten into an argument with Hyland after James was left in the tub and almost drowned. After the child was saved, Minor said, Hyland was told she couldn't leave the baby alone in the water.

"And she said, 'Oh, he's been taking a bath by himself since he was 12 months old' ... I said, 'Are you stupid or what?' " Minor said in pretrial testimony.

Hyland's husband, Martin D. Hyland III, was not charged.

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