HIALEAH, FLA. (WSVN) - A woman has been arrested after confessing to meticulously planning and executing the strangulation of her 8-year-old son, according to police.
Officials said 36-year-old Shaneka Ann Mckinzie transported her unconscious son to Hialeah Hospital on Tuesday evening, where he was pronounced dead.
“The murder of a child by their mother, by a parent, that just exceeds imagination in many points,” said Miami-Dade Police Detective Andre Martin.
Mckinzie appeared in court Thursday afternoon.
“I believe in the arrest affidavit there is probable cause for the charge of first-degree murder,” said Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Mindy S. Glazer.
“Ms. Mckinzie confessed,” said Martin.
Detectives said the suspect confessed that for two days, she plotted to kill her child.
“She decided to carry out this plan while young Jason was asleep in the rear seat of her vehicle,” said Martin. “Once he was asleep, she decided that this would be the most opportune time to murder her son, utilizing a tablecloth to both strangle and suffocate him.”
Shortly after her son became unresponsive, Mckinzie drove around the county running errands with her lifeless child’s body in the vehicle, police reported.
“She killed her child,” said Glazer.
Mckinzie remains locked up without bond.
“Our detectives are still investigating and trying to determine a possible motive, that’s something we all ask ourselves in a crime this heinous,” said Martin. “As a parent, as an investigator, this is the last case that anyone wants to hear of. The murder of a child in any situation is a tragic thing to deal with.”
An autopsy revealed asphyxiation as the cause of death, according to the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office.
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