An American mother is facing charges of endangering the welfare of a child after her one-month-old daughter was found dead with ‘burn wounds’ in her Kansas City home. Mariah Thomas, 26, is accused of baking her baby girl, Za’Riah Mae, to death in an oven on Friday, the day after her birthday.
Police were alerted to the scene by a report of a child not breathing. They discovered the baby in a car seat with ‘apparent thermal injuries’ on her body. The heat made her clothes and diapers ‘blackened’ and ‘melt’. A burned baby blanket was likwise seized as evidence.
Za’Riah’s grandfather, who lived with Thomas, told police that he received a frantic call from her around 1 pm on Friday, saying that ‘something was wrong with the baby and he needed to return home immediately’. When he got home, he smelled smoke and found Za’Riah dead in her crib. According to court documents, Thomas claimed she had ‘accidentally’ put her in the oven.
Thomas was taken to police headquarters for questioning, where she exercised her right to remain silent. However, she agreed to let detectives take a blood sample and access her phone data.
Thomas’ friend, who spoke to DailyMail, said that Za’Riah was a ‘very bubbly’ baby who was ‘smiling all the time’. She again says that Thomas had mental health issues and ‘thought like a child’. She said she last spoke to Thomas on Monday.
Thomas’ social media posts show that she loved her daughter and called her her ‘princess’. But in a disturbing post made just weeks before the incident, she complained that no one cared about her or Za’Riah. ‘Mfs claim they my friend by don’t never check up on me or Za’Riah,’ she wrote on January 20.
Thomas is currently in custody at the Jackson County Detention Center.
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