Custodial dad to be sentenced in choking death of 2-year-old son (Danielson, Connecticut)

Dad is identified as DAVID MAHAN. We have posted on this case before. Still a media blackout on how this neglectful father and his heroin-addicted girlfriend (the "clinic" in question involved methadone) got custody, or what happened to this poor little boy's mother. Who allowed this situation to happen?

http://www.norwichbulletin.com/article/20160303/NEWS/160309817

Putnam father of toddler who choked to death will be sentenced Monday

David Mahan, of Putnam, whose 2-year-old son choked to death on food after being locked in a room and left alone in his house, will be sentenced Monday to two years in prison.

By John Penney Posted Mar. 3, 2016 at 1:52 PM

DANIELSON — A Putnam man is scheduled to be sentenced on Monday to two years in prison for his role in the 2014 choking death of his 2-year-old son.

David Mahan, 31, pleaded guilty in January to second-degree manslaughter and risk of injury to a child, according to prosecutors in the Danielson Superior Court’s state’s attorney’s office. Under a plea agreement, Mahan will be sentenced to seven years in prison, suspended after two years, and five years of probation.

Mahan and his former girlfriend, Renee Peterson, 33, were arrested nearly two years ago in connection with the death of Mahan’s son inside the couple’s apartment at 129 Mechanics St.

According to court documents, on March 26, 2014, Peterson left the boy and his 1-year-old sibling alone in a locked bedroom for hours on the day of the incident with bowls of dry cereal while she dropped one of her two children off at school and later drove to a Willimantic methadone clinic for treatment.

Mahan, an electrician with the Mercier Electrical Co. in Auburn, Mass., was reportedly at work when Peterson came home and found the boy not breathing and unresponsive in the bedroom.

After Peterson called 911 and began CPR, emergency personnel arrived and took the child to Day Kimball Hospital in Putnam, where he was pronounced dead. An emergency room doctor observed what appeared to be food in the victim’s airway, police said. According to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the child’s cause of death was by choking on a bolus, or mass of chewed food. The death was ruled a homicide.

Peterson told police she had routinely left Mahan’s children alone for several hours a day since mid March of 2014, when Mahan returned to work after a layoff of five months, according to an arrest warrant. In a statement to police, Peterson said Mahan was aware she was leaving his children alone and told her to “just lock the children in the bedroom while she went to the clinic,” until other day care arrangements could be made, according to the warrant.

Shortly after the boy’s death, Mahan was arrested by Massachusetts state police on fugitive from justice charges.

In August, Peterson was sentenced to serve five years of a seven-year sentence, along with five years of probation. She pleaded guilty on June 5 to second-degree manslaughter and risk of injury charges in the child’s death.