Mother charged over child’s injuries
State police in Waynesburg charged a 28-year-old mother with assaulting her infant son after she reportedly admitted she bounced the child in a moment of frustration when he was crying more than a year ago.
Aggravated assault and other counts were filed on Thursday against Kyra L. Colledge at the office of District Judge Glenn Bates, near the Jefferson Township residence where she allegedly caused the injuries to her child on May 20, 2018, when he was 3 months old.
Court papers list Colledge as living in North Fayette Township, but say she was at an address on Adamik Road in Jefferson that day. The investigation started around two weeks later with a report to Allegheny County police about injuries that a physician discovered when she examined the baby at UPMC Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh.
Court papers say the child had bi-lateral subdural hematomas – blood pooling in the tissue around the brain – and other signs of head trauma possibly caused by shaking.
In September, a county police Sgt. Jarret Kaspryszyn administered a lie-detector test on the mother, according to court papers. She allegedly said that multiple dogs were at the Jefferson residence on the day in question, adding to her stress level.
Colledge allegedly went on to admit that “at one point during the day in a (sic) attempt to calm her child and get him to stop crying, she ‘bounced him on her knee for about five minutes,'” a trooper wrote in court papers. She reportedly added “that she had never ‘bounced’ her child like this before and never ‘bounced’ him like this after.”
“The defendant related that she was just frustrated and wanted him to stop crying,” a state trooper added in court papers. She allegedly blamed that incident for her child’s injuries but said it wasn’t her intention to do so.
Court records showed Colledge had yet to be arraigned before Bates later in the day. She also faces charges of simple assault and reckless endangerment, plus a summary count of harassment.
No attorney was listed in court papers as representing her at this point.