A young mother is being evaluated by professionals after a sheriff’s deputy found her at a Maryland park Friday pushing her dead 3-year-old on a swing for several hours.
Authorities believe the toddler had been deceased for several or more hours when the deputy found her. The 24-year-old mother may have also been pushing him on the swing at Wills Memorial Park in La Plata, Maryland since at least the previous day. Investigators were still trying to understand what happened to the child.
Deputies were called at 7 a.m. when a resident near the park said the woman had been pushing the child for hours. The mother had been seen near the same swing set, pushing the boy, since the previous day.
“She was seen there (yesterday), and we don’t know if she ever left,” Diane Richardson, a spokesperson for the Charles County Sheriff’s Office said.
The deputy wanted to start performing CPR, but realized the child had been dead for several hours, so no CPR was performed.
“It was really difficult for the officer to encounter the situation,” Richardson said.
The mother, who was not immediately identified, was also taken to a nearby hospital to be evaluated, Richardson said. She talked briefly with authorities but declined to offer details.
Investigators have reached out to the woman’s family and are canvassing the neighborhood in an effort to determine what happened. The case is being handled as a death investigation, and the woman has not been arrested yet. “It’s a very sad situation,” Richardson said.
