Suspected child strangler to be held until trial
Stepmom charged in 5-year-old’s death
SANTA FE — A district judge ruled Tuesday that a woman accused of strangling her 5-yearold stepson must be held in jail until trial, saying the woman likely suffers from mental illness that causes her to be dangerous.
“For today, I’m finding clear and convincing evidence that tilts the scales in favor of the state,” Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said from the bench as she ordered continued incarceration.
Melynie Curtis, 20, told Santa Fe police she strangled her stepson, Jayden Curtis, at an Airport Road apartment on Sept. 22 while the boy’s father was at work. Jayden first was declared brain-dead by doctors at Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe and was later taken off life support at the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque.
Prosecutor Martin Maxwell told Marlowe Sommer that police had been called to Curtis’ home a few months before Jayden’s death, on April 2, after she held a razor blade to her stomach while she was seven months pregnant
and threatened to slice open her belly.
Although Curtis doesn’t have a criminal history, Marlowe Sommer decided that her recent violent acts prove she is a danger to herself and people who may be around her.
“That certainly tells me that we have some mental illness here,” the judge said.
Defense attorney Todd Farkas asked Marlowe Sommer to allow Curtis to be placed on house arrest with her grandparents in the Navajo Nation and said U.S. marshals had jurisdiction to enter the reservation if Curtis were to violate her conditions of release.
“I don’t believe she is a danger to anyone else as long as she’s not around any children,” Farkas said.
But prosecutor Maxwell was against letting Curtis live with her grandparents and maintained that she is “out of control with rage and anger.”
Curtis’ three biological children were at the apartment when Jayden was strangled. Those children are now in foster care, but Maxwell said he was still worried that they could be in danger if Curtis is released.
Jayden was taken to Christus St. Vincent with a broken clavicle two days before he was taken back there after the strangling incident. The state Children, Youth and Families Department was called in for the clavicle injury and emailed a notification about it to Santa Fe Police, but officers weren’t able to investigate before Jayden died.
On the second visit to the hospital, Curtis originally claimed that Jayden accidentally drowned in the bathtub, but doctors found no signs of drowning and instead found injuries consistent with strangulation. Curtis then told police that she didn’t mean to choke Jayden “that hard” and was getting upset with him because he kept saying that she wasn’t his mother.