A Brooklyn Park man is charged with fatally suffocating his infant daughter after a night of drinking and cocaine use, while in an unrelated case a Burnsville man was sentenced to prison in the shaking death of his newborn son.
Winston X. Hicks, 30, was charged last month in Hennepin County District Court with one count of second-degree manslaughter in the death of his 9-week-old daughter.
Police had been called to an apartment in the 3400 block of NE. Central Avenue in Minneapolis on Aug. 3. The baby was pronounced dead when she arrived at the hospital.
The baby's mother told police the couple and a friend had spent the previous evening drinking and smoking marijuana.
She said the baby woke up crying around 1:30 a.m., and she put her in a bouncer bassinet in the bedroom where Hicks was asleep.
The mother said she slept in the living room and woke up about 8:30 a.m. to find a blanket "balled up" over the baby's face, and when she pulled it back, she saw the baby foaming at the mouth and not breathing.
"… Defendant told Witness that he was drunk and that he killed his baby because he put a blanket over the baby's face because she was crying the night before," the complaint said.
A medical examiner's report found that the baby died of asphyxia.
