An 11-year-old girl from a Cleveland suburb has been charged with murder in the beating of a 2-month-old who was staying overnight with the girl and her mother to give the baby’s mom a break.
Wickliffe police Chief Randy Ice said at a news conference Monday that the 11-year-old, her mother and the baby girl, Zuri Whitehead of Cleveland, were on a couch downstairs when the mother fell asleep at about 3 a.m. Friday. The mother was awakened less than an hour later by her daughter, who was holding the badly injured infant. Ice said the 11-year-old took the infant upstairs. When she returned downstairs, the infant was bleeding and her head was badly swollen, he said.
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Ice is considering counseling for the officers who responded to the scene.
“We’re having a hard time getting (our) heads around this,” he said. “You don’t see stuff like this.”
