Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A judge found yesterday the 25-year-old Centralia woman accused of decapitating her premature newborn is competent for further proceedings in the case.

Laura Lynn Hickey

Laura Lynn Hickey was arrested in early March after police found the deceased baby in a Tupperware container under the kitchen sink of her trailer home.

Prosecutors allege Hickey – who was about halfway through her pregnancy – used a serrated knife to cut off the infant’s head as it was trying to take a breath after she unexpectedly delivered it into a toilet.

She said she didn’t think it was going to live and she didn’t want it to suffer, according to charging documents.

Hickey pleaded not guilty yesterday to first-degree murder.

She has been jailed since March 9, the arraignment put on hold while she underwent psychological evaluations at Western State Hospital.

Doctors were asked to look into issues of competency, insanity and diminished capacity.

Lewis County Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt’s finding yesterday of competency is related to her ability to understand the proceedings and assist in her own defense.

His decision made it possible to move forward, with yesterday’s arraignment and the scheduling of a trial for next February.

Hickey lived in a fifth-wheel trailer at the Peppertree Motor Inn and RV Park in Centralia and has no income or assets, according to the attorney who represented her for her first court appearance.

She reportedly told police she used methamphetamine two days before the incident and had been awake since then. The state had previously taken three of her children out of her home.

Charging documents indicate an emergency room doctor estimated Hickey was about 21 weeks along in her pregnancy when he examined her after what she initially said was a miscarriage.

Her court-appointed lawyer, Kenneth Johnson, has said whether a fetus at that stage of development can survive outside its mother’s womb is an issue that will come up in this case.

Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer contends the autopsy indicated the fetus was born alive and was viable.

Hickey remains in the Lewis County Jail, held on $1 million bail.

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Read “Mental evaluation ordered for Centralia mother charged with killing baby” from Thursday March 17, 2011, here

Read “Mother charged with killing newborn, held on $1 million bail” from Friday March 11, 2011, here

Read “Centralia woman accused of decapitating her newborn” from Wednesday March 9, 2011, here

Read “News brief: “Remains” found under sink after apparent miscarriage to be examined by coroner” from Wednesday March 2, 2011, here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS –  Steven Grant Williams admitted he left a handprint-shaped bruise on the butt of his girlfriend’s 7-year-old boy, and switched to using a belt because he thought it wouldn’t leave marks.

Steven Grant Williams

He described the bruises on the child’s elbows and elsewhere from when he held the boy’s head under the shower, trying to teach him to wash his own hair.

The boy would thrash around, “spaz out” and get so combative, sometimes Williams would simply let go, and the child would fall in the tub.

He knew it would hurt, Williams acknowledged, but he didn’t know what else to do during the shower sessions. The child smelled like feces, he said.

“I was concerned if I tried to hold on to him the same way, he could break his shoulder,” Williams said.

The Chehalis man and the child’s mother told the jury the first-grader didn’t know his alphabet, didn’t know his numbers and didn’t know how to clean himself. Since she was working and Williams wasn’t, Williams tried to teach him those things, during a two to three week visit last summer.

When the boy was returned to his paternal grandmother, who he lived with, she saw his bruises and took him directly to the hospital. A responding officer contacted Chehalis police and reported the 7-year-old boy’s body was covered in bruises.

After Williams’ arrest last August, Chehalis’s deputy police chief called it one of the most extensive child abuse cases he’d seen in his career.

The youngster’s two black eyes were so swollen, he had to open his eyes wide just to see, a social worker told the jury.

A bruise on his cheek: “He said that was when he got smacked silly,” the social worker said.

Williams told the jury the black eyes appeared about four days before the child left.

He didn’t know how it happened. One theory was it may have been a bug bite, or maybe an allergy, or he fell out of bed and hit the lamp, the mother Sarra Dennis said.

She saw it when she returned home from work one morning from a night shift at a casino.

“Most of his head was swelling, the top of it,” Dennis said.

The explanations came during a jury trial last week in Lewis County Superior Court.

Williams, now 40, was charged with assault of a child in the second-degree.

The jury learned that Williams didn’t know until almost the end of the visit that the child took baths, not showers.

“Did you ever think of giving (the child) a bath?” Deputy Prosecutor Colin Hayes asked him.

“No, not until this was all over with,” Williams answered.

It took the jury just 90 minutes late Friday afternoon to find the National Guardsman guilty as charged.

When he returns to the courtroom at the end of the month, Williams faces a standard sentencing range of two and a half to three and a half years, Hayes said today.

But because the jury found aggravating factors, he could potentially be sentenced to as long as 10 years, Hayes said.

No credible explanation for the injuries on the boy’s face and head were uncovered during the three-day trial, according to Hayes.

“We’ll never know all the things he did to that kid,” Hayes said. “I suspect there was a lot more going on.”

Williams is scheduled to be sentenced at 9 a.m. on June 27.

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Read “Chehalis National Guardsman charged with assault of 7-year-old boy” from Saturday Aug. 21, 2010, here

Read “Chehalis National Guardsman pleads not guilty to assaulting child” from Friday Aug. 27, 2010, here