Neighbors, relatives confront father of dead 5-month-old daughter (Syracuse, New York)

This incident is typical of the way non-abusive mothers are treated. They are blamed as "equally" responsible for the deeds of violent fathers, even when the mothers aren't present in the home. Guess moms are supposed to have some sort of magic juju to stop babysitting dads from killing the kids while Mom is out buying food.

As for those who smugly insist that she should have left the violent father after the baby's leg was broken at three months--well, this is upstate New York. A place I am (unfortunately) familiar with personally. (Hi Judge Judith Claire!) The fathers rights cabal is very powerful here, and well-embedded in the family court system. I can just about guarantee you that dad JOSEPH MOLINA, at MINIMUM, would have been granted unsupervised visitation with the baby. If not full custody. And he would have been highly pissed off and motivated to harm the mother and the child. So the mother really didn't have an awful lot of choice here. Except to run for it. And good luck with that.

http://www.cnycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=970090#.UoJT4tco7IU

Neighbors, relatives confront father of dead five-month old

by Laura Hand Posted: 11.11.2013 at 5:01 PM

The father of a 5-month old who died at Upstate of head trauma on Saturday was back at the James Street apartment house where she lived on Monday afternoon---and was confronted and threatened by relatives and neighbors.

Joseph Molina said he was there, to check on another of the children who lived there with the five month's old mother, 19 year old Wanda Trumble. She is being held on assault charges in connection with what police say was a beating death.

As he walked into the 477 James Street lobby, Molina was shouted down by Trumbles cousin, Gracie Baker, who demanded he tell the truth.

Neighbors told us they felt police got it wrong in charging the mother, that she had been out grocery shopping and the father was watching the child. He told them that he noticed the baby wasn't breathing as Wendy came home, and she told him to call 911.

Neighbor Leigha Epperson says the baby "didn't look like it had any life" as ambulance crews took her out, and that Wanda--not Joseph, as police reported, rode with Nataliah to the hospital.

Joseph said the baby died in his arms, 9 hours later on Saturday. He says the doctors told him 'when they did the MRI it was due to old and new blood (an old injury and a new one)--and neighbors shouted 'How did that injury happen again?'

Child protective had been called to the apartment before, after the baby's leg was broken, when she was 3 months old. The cast had just come of a couple weeks ago. Neighbors told us the baby had been in the father's care then.

This incident comes five years, almost to the day, since the beating death of another Syracuse baby, Imani Jennings.