ARSHON BAKER- 5 yo - (2009) Cleveland OH

A five-year-old died at MetroHealth Medical Center Saturday afternoon after suffering what police describe as years of abuse.


Cleveland Police say they arrested the
child's mother, a 24-year-old Cleveland woman, after she brought the
child to the hospital Friday evening.
They say they were called to the hospital after evidence of abuse
was shown on the child's body that indicates he had been abused for
quite some time.
Police say the mother told them that she beat her son after he tried to get her attention by pulling on her dress.
Police say after the child tried to get away numerous times, he hit
his head on a table and according to the mother, "went limp."
She then took him to the hospital. So far, no charges have been filed.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/10/boy_dies_suffered_years_of_abu.html
Bruised, burned 5-year-old boy dies; mother beat him, police say

By Michael Sangiacomo

October 24, 2009, 2:55PM



Cuyahoga County JailAngel
Glass

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A 5-year-old boy who police believe endured years
of abuse died Saturday, one day after being hospitalized with head
injuries and cuts, bruises and burns over his entire body.
The boy's mother, who gave birth to Arshon Baker while she was in
prison, was arrested and was being held on suspicion of felonious
assault. Police said more-serious charges could be filed against Angel
Glass, 24, when they complete their investigation.
Glass told police on Friday that she beat her son because he pulled
on her dress to get her attention, Lt. Thomas Stacho said.
Police were called to MetroHealth Medical Center after the boy
arrived in full cardiac arrest and staffers noticed the wounds on his
body, Stacho said.
"He is covered with new and healed cuts, burns and bruises
everywhere, even his groin and the bottoms of his feet," Stacho said.
"The hospital staffers found scars from previous beatings with an
extension cord. He's covered with old and new cuts."
County social workers did not have an open file on Arshon or the
family, said Deborah Forkas, director of the Cuyahoga County Department
of Children and Family Services. She was concerned about the boy's two
siblings, one under a year old and the other 7 years old. They are with
family memhers. Social workers were trying to determine if Glass had
been investigated previously, Forkas said.
Police interviewed Glass on Friday night after Arshon was rushed to
MetroHealth from their house in the 6600 block of Ovington Road, Stacho
said.
"She said she was in her apartment doing another woman's hair when
the boy pulled on her dress to get her attention," Stacho said. "She
ordered him to stand in the corner. After a few minutes, he came out of
the corner, so she said she took a brush and beat him on his hands.
"When that didn't work, she took a braided belt and hit him with it,"
Stacho said. "She said the boy ran away and she grabbed him and
continued to beat him."
Stacho said she grabbed him by the leg when he ran away again, and
this time he struck his head on a table. His eyes rolled back in his
head and he went limp.
"So she poured water on his head and then eventually took him to the
hospital," Stacho said.
Surgeons performed surgery on the boy Friday night to relieve
pressure on his brain, Forkas said.
Glass was pregnant with Arshon when she was sent to prison in 2003.
Glass was hit in the face when she intervened in a fight involving
her brother and another person on July 2, 2003. Glass; her boyfriend,
Deshon Baker; and three other people went to the home of the person who
hit her and another fight broke out, according to court records.
East Cleveland police officer Bobby Davis tried to break up the fight
but Baker shot Davis five times.
Glass pleaded guilty for her role in the incident and was sentenced
to three years. Deshon Baker was convicted of attempted aggravated
murder with a weapons offense and sentenced to more than 10 years in
prison.
She asked for mercy because of her young age and pregnancy, but
refused to testify against Baker, according to court records.
Neighbors near Arshon's home Saturday said they did not know the boy
or his mother.
The Cuyhoga County Coroner will perform an autopsy Oct. 27.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/10/funeral_set_for_arshon_baker.html


Funeral set for Arshon Baker, 5, who died after he was beaten by
his mother

By Diane Suchetka, The Plain Dealer
October 30, 2009, 7:14PM
Funeral services for Arshon Baker, the 5-year-old Cleveland boy who
police said died after his mother beat him for tugging on her dress,
will be Tuesday at the Highland Church of Christ, 27495 Highland Road,
Richmond Heights.
The 10 a.m. wake will be followed by a funeral at 10:30. Burial will
be in Riverside Cemetery in Cleveland.
Services were delayed while family members tried to raise money to
cover the costs. They have set up the Arshon Baker memorial fund and are
asking that donations to help the family be made at any FirstMerit Bank
branch.
Arshon, a quiet kindergartner who loved cartoons, hamburgers and
french fries, has two sisters. Family members said they are in the
custody of the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family
Services.
His mother, Angel Glass, 24, is in jail on $1 million bond, charged
with aggravated murder in his Oct. 24 death. The man she lived with,
Larry Wanzo, has been charged with obstruction of justice in connection
with the case. His bond is $250,000.
Arshon was born in 2004, while his mother was in prison.
He died of blunt force trauma to the head, trunk and extremities,
according to the Cuyahoga County Coroner's Office.
Police have said the boy's body was covered with burns, bruises and
new and healed cuts.
Boyd & Son Funeral Home, 2165 East 89th St., is handling
arrangements.

Locked Up: $1M Bond For Pregnant Mother Accused Of Savagely Beating
Five-Year-Old Son


Posted: Oct 24, 2009 12:39 PM EDT

Saturday, October 24, 2009 12:39 PM EST
Updated: Oct 28, 2009 4:08 PM EDT






Posted by Web Staff - email |
Facebook | Twitter UPDATE:
CLEVELAND, OH (WOIO) - The Cleveland mother accused of
fatally beating her five-year-old son will remain behind bars. Angel
Glass slapped with a $1M bond after her Wednesday morning court
appearance. Cops say Glass beat her 5-year-old son - Arshon
Baker - so badly that he went into cardiac arrest. The child later died
at MetroHealth Medical Center. The brutal beating
happened Friday at 6615 Ovington when police say the little boy his
mother's dress to get her attention. Glass turned and allegedly beat the
boy for his actions. Cleveland Police Lt. Thomas Stacho tells
19 Action News that Baker's body was covered with cuts, scars, bruises
and burns both old and new, and also had injuries to bottom of his feet
and groin area. Glass' attorney acknowledged that she is
currently pregnant. Larry Wanzo was in the home when
investigators arrived. He is charged with obstruction of justice for not
answering officers' questions relating to the beating. His bond was set
at $250K.
http://www.woio.com/global/story.asp?s=11376721

Arshon Baker, Alexandria Hamilton died because every adult failed
them: editorial

By The Plain Dealer Editorial Board

February 28, 2010, 4:57AM


Such beautiful children were "let down by so many people," wrote a
reader after absorbing The Plain Dealer's recent stories about the
deaths of 5-year-old Arshon Baker and 2-year-old Alexandria Hamilton.
Of course, the chief burden of guilt falls on those who abused and
murdered two sweet children in separate incidents. Both mothers have
been charged.
Arshon died of blunt impact wounds. Long, narrow welts covered much
of his small, slender body from what appeared to have been repeated
beatings with a cord. Alexandria died from burns over much of her body.
Their chief caretakers now face murder trials, but responsibility for
these tragedies is much broader. As graphically detailed by Plain
Dealer reporter Diane Suchetka last Sunday, both children fell through
gaping holes in Cuyahoga County's safety net. These holes require
concentrated attention, legal changes, local reforms and money to fix.
Sadly, the grim record of such deaths shows that real change is rare.
Instead, community outrage soon is replaced by apathy and then
forgetfulness, until the next toddler dies. This editorial page, and
this city, need to keep remembering Arshon and Alexandria until their
deaths find expression in changed policies--.
'Child welfare workers are not omniscient, and legal restrictions,
bureaucratic hang-ups and insufficient money to monitor questionable
parents over the long haul make their job harder.
New tools are needed, for longer periods of time. Family
reunification cannot be the only or even the chief aim if the money
isn't there to make that option reasonably safe for children. The law
and the practice must be made more flexible and more dependent on common
sense, parental history and what's best for each child, not what the
parents would prefer.
In Arshon's and Alexandria's cases, Suchetka's reporting points to
the failure of child welfare professionals, notably from the Cuyahoga
County Department of Children and Family Services, who had contact with
both families, to guard and protect these youngsters.
The department "preserved" these families, as the lingo goes, but
failed to follow through in a sustained enough way to make sure that
Alexandria's mother, Tyesha Hamilton, and Arshon's mother, Angel Glass,
had the supports they needed to take care of their children.
Deborah Forkas, director of children services in Cuyahoga County,
points to a state law that gives her department 12 months to 24 months
either to reunify a family or sever parental rights and head for
adoption.
That became pertinent in Hamilton's case because the county faced a
deadline to permanently remove Alexandria and her three siblings or
restore them to Hamilton's care.
Child welfare officials chose wrongly, brushing off warnings from
Alexandria's dedicated foster family, whose alarms should have carried
more weight.
The law, promoted by former Sen. Mike DeWine when he was an Ohio
legislator, was not intended to push family reunification at all costs
-- and it ought not to be used in that fashion. It was a prod to get
agencies to work quickly toward reunification or adoption so youngsters
wouldn't get stuck in foster care limbo, or in unsafe homes with their
biological parents. Safety was the goal; it still should be.
Forkas insists that the social workers in these cases appear to have
done everything right. She notes that both mothers took classes in
parenting and other subjects and that neither was ever charged with
abuse.
"What do you do when a family is case compliant?" Forkas asked.
A better question is, what do you do with child welfare officials who
set the bar too low and ignore the obvious?
Merely taking some classes is hardly enough to mend a broken family.
Classes aren't enough to make sure that poor, single, stressed mothers
will be able to handle the job of raising several children on their own.

Glass, Arshon's mother, was last in contact with the county child
welfare department in October 2008. She subsequently lost her two
part-time jobs, went off her medication and became so depressed she
couldn't get out of bed in the morning.
But since her case was closed after she agreed to take a parenting
class -- she had called the agency after her boyfriend slapped Arshon's
sibling -- she was no longer on the department's radar screen as her
life spiraled out of control.
As a sad footnote, Glass told caseworkers after Arson's death that
she tried to get mental-health help with a local publicly funded agency
and was told there would be a six-month wait.
The Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office, which had a warrant for Glass'
arrest since 2007 on a felonious assault charge, did not tell children's
services, which might have resumed supervision, Forkas now says.
A simple police computer hookup might have alerted child welfare
workers to the outstanding warrant, which would have required
reimposition of monitoring or even Arshon's removal from the home -- if
the agency learned of it.
That major communication gap ought to be fixed.
Meanwhile, county child welfare staff failed to keep close tabs on
Hamilton, Alexandria's mother, and so did the shelter that let her slip
away without a phone call to her social worker. That is no way to run a
safety net.
Through the years, county officials have seesawed between family
reunification and permanent county custody. Either extreme has raised
justifiable opposition.
From now on, they must focus on making calls that keep youngsters
safe above all else, on listening to everyone, including foster parents,
and on using programs that stick with troubled families for much
longer.
None of that happened in Arshon's and Alexandria's cases, and the
children paid with their lives.
Let's do all we can to make them the last children to do so.
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/02/arshon_baker_alexandria_hamilt.html

Cleveland mother who beat 5-year-old son to death with hair brush to get life in prison



Angel Glass makes plea deal


CLEVELAND - The Cleveland woman charged with beating her young son to death with a hairbrush pleaded guilty Friday to aggravated murder.
Angel Glass, 24, appeared in a Cleveland courtroom as part of a plea deal.
Prosecutors said her son, 5-year-old Arshon Baker, died after she beat him with a hairbrush and braided belt on Oct. 23 after he tried to pull on her skirt.
Baker became limp and 911 was called. On the next day when police arrived to execute a search warrant, Larry Wanzo, 22, refused to allow police into the residence.
Prosecutors said Baker died from blunt force trauma to the head, neck, trunk and extremities. He suffered abrasions and contusions to his forehead, nose and cheeks. He also had older injuries covering his body including fractured wrists.
In February 2010, Wanzo pleaded guilty to the indictment: one count of obstructing justice and faces a maximum of five years in prison. He is currently in jail awaiting sentencing.
Due to the terms of the plea deal, Glass will not face the death penalty.
Her sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 1.
http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/cleveland-mother-who-beat-5-year-old-son-to-death-with-hair-brush-to-get-life-in-prison