NEWPORT, Ky. (AP) — A northern Kentucky woman who pleaded guilty in the beating death of her 1-year-old son has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Stacey Schuchart, 32, of Dayton received the sentence Tuesday for the 2019 death of her son, 1-year-old Sean Buttery Jr.
On the night paramedics attempted to resuscitate 17-month-old Sean Buttery Jr., his mother Stacey Schuchart told them he had become unresponsive after hitting his head on the microwave.
What the coroner found later looked more like the aftermath of a car crash, Judge Karen Thomas said at Schuchart’s Sept. 2019 arraignment.
Schuchart initially pleaded not guilty in 2019 when she was arrested, but changed her plea to guilty in February to a single count of murder, according to documents filed in Campbell County Circuit Court.
The documents said Schuchart was home alone with her children in August 2019 when she called 911 to report Buttery was injured. Emergency responders arrived to find the boy in critical condition and he later died at a hospital.
Sean had a head wound at the time of his Aug. 6, 2019 death at Children’s Hospital, Thomas said. He also had fractures on both sides of his pelvis and throughout the rest of his skeleton. His bladder was detached and bleeding into his torso.
The paramedics who attempted to save him “observed lacerations that had scabbed over as well as bruises of varying colors across the boy’s body,” Thomas told the court.
An autopsy determined the death was caused by “homicidal violence,” documents state.
