A Colorado mother is being charged with the death of her child after he died in squalid conditions, 20 hours after she left him alone.
According to The New York Daily News, Megan McKeon, 24, left her 3-year-old son, Austin Davis, home alone for around 20 hours. She left him with food, juice, and a movie, believing it would be sufficient as she’d done this near 20 times before.
McKeon was reportedly went to the supermarket after leaving Austin alone, then went to see her boyfriend and ended up spending the night with him.
When she returned the next morning, Austin was dead.
According to The Daily Mail, when authorities went to McKeon’s campground cabin to try to revive little Austin, they found a horrid scene before them. Human waste and food were around the home where the child had been left by himself.
McKeon pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of child abuse, but those charges were dropped when it was realized that, if convicted, McKeon would only 42 months in prison at most.
The district attorney has stated that he wishes to charge McKeon with child abuse resulting in death, a felony.
“She killed a baby,” Austin’s grandmother, Charity O'Konski, shouted when the initial charges against McKeon were dropped.
“All she had to do was call me. There’s no if, ands or buts to what happened, it’s her fault no matter what happened. She is accountable for that baby. Nothing is ever going to be enough, because he will never come back to us but she took his life away and the only way to take her life away is to let her sit behind those bars and let her think about what she did,” O’Konski said.
Authorities are waiting on the results of Austin’s toxicology report, but the doctor who tried to revive Austin fears he may have ingested prescription medication.
Austin’s father, Tyler Davis, 22, was in prison at the time of his son’s death for failing to register as a sexual offender.