Mother charged in death of baby

She was the fifth child of a woman whose first two were taken away for neglect. The fourth had suspicious bruising.

By KATHRYN WEXLER

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 8, 2000

TAMPA -- Sherrideen Smith is 25. She has given birth to five children.

The first two, a 3-year-old girl and infant boy, were taken from her by the state in 1994 because of neglect.

Smith gave her third baby to his father in 1996 after allegations that she couldn't care for him.

Last September, her fourth child, a boy now 2, turned up with suspicious bruising on his face. Child welfare workers started to investigate.

Now Smith's fifth baby, a girl named Akua, born just three months ago, is dead.

Smith ran to a neighbor's home two weeks ago and dialed 911 to report her infant was lying in her crib, not breathing.

Police say that's because Smith tied four blankets around her baby's tiny head to smother her crying. It wasn't until Thursday, detectives said, that she revealed what had happened.

Stress from raising a newborn and working the night shift at a Wendy's restaurant on Hillsborough Avenue pushed her over the edge, Smith told police.

"She said she was trying to relieve pressure," said Tampa Detective Julia Dickie.

Smith was charged with second-degree murder, punishable by life in prison. She was held without bond Friday, her fifth arrest since 1994, mostly for resisting arrest without violence and once for grand theft.

Detectives said Smith kept changing her account of what happened to Akua on March 23. In one version, she blamed the death on her 2-year-old son.

"There were a lot of different stories the first day," Dickie said.

Smith lives at Central Park Village, a cluster of publicly subsidized townhouses. Joe Williams, a next-door neighbor, said that the day before the baby died, Smith sat on her front stoop complaining about work.

"I'm tired; I need a vacation," Smith told Williams.

The next day, Smith raced to the nearby home of Gwendolyn Bryant to call paramedics.

"She said the baby wrapped up in a blanket and strangled itself," Bryant said. "She was cursing," but not crying. "I thought it was strange."

Cynthia Cleggett, assistant manager at Wendy's, said that for years, Smith rode her bike 2 1/2 miles a day to get to work by 5 p.m. and labored until midnight. Cleggett said Smith called if she was going to be late and told co-workers she spent her paychecks on children's clothes.

But residents who lived across from Smith on Whitehead Court said she was harsh with her children.

The neglect charges in 1994 concerned Smith's daughter, 3, and infant son. The children were placed in a relative's home with supervised visits only, said Tom Jones, spokesman for the Florida Department of Children and Families.

When a third child was born two years later, the specter of neglect again was raised, but those allegations were not substantiated. Smith voluntarily gave that baby to the biological father, Jones said.

Last September, a doctor examined bruises on Smith's fourth child, now 2 years old, but couldn't say definitively someone was inflicting pain.

Case workers were supposed to check on the boy's welfare, but that didn't happen, despite home visits and phone calls, Jones said.

"We were trying to do further exams on the boy and there were a number of delays, some caused we think deliberately by (Smith) and the fact that she had (Akua) in December. Sometimes the boy was visiting the biological father . . . Consequently, the follow-up medicals on him never got accomplished," Jones said.

"The next time we hear from them is when the baby's dead in March."

Child welfare workers took custody of the 2-year-old the day Akua died.

Bryant, like some other neighbors, was outraged Friday. She wondered why state officials "let her keep those two children when they took the other ones away after what she done."

Doctors have since found fresh bruises and marks on Smith's 2-year-old, Jones said. They suspect abuse.

Times Researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Kathryn Wexler can be reached at (813) 226-3386 or wexler@sptimes.com

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.