MAGNOLIA -- The felony case against two teenagers whose 2-week-old baby suffered nearly 100 rat bites over her 5-pound body is on hold until mental evaluations are completed on the couple, a judge ruled in circuit court Thursday.
The baby's mother, Erica Shryock, 19, wearing a red jail jumpsuit with bright orange shackles on her wrists, shuffled to the front of the courtroom. Her eyes were wide as she tucked a tendril of hair away from her pale face.
She answered a question from the judge with a quiet "Yes" and a nod.
Charles Elliott, 18, the baby's father, dressed in a red-and-white-striped jail jumpsuit and his hair buzzed, also was subdued and wide-eyed as the judge quickly ordered the mental evaluations requested by defense lawyer Joseph Churchwell of Benton.
Shryock and Elliott both waved to family members in the galley as they left the courtroom.
The couple -- each held in jail in lieu of $15,000 bond -- are charged with Class B felony charges of permitting abuse of a minor and Class D felony charges of first-degree endangering the welfare of a minor. They face up to 20 years in prison and up to $21,000 in fines, if convicted.
Churchwell did not return messages seeking comment as of late Thursday.
Calls to deputy prosecutor Ryan Phillips were not returned.
Shryock and Elliott were living with a friend in a ramshackle house on Cordelia Street in Magnolia on May 14 when they awoke to find their 15-day-old daughter covered in blood and dozens of rat bites on her arms, hands, face and fingers.
A one-inch wound on her forehead where her skull was visible required extensive reconstructive surgery.
Shryock and Elliott told conflicting accounts to investigators, according to the arrest affidavit. Shryock said she put the baby to bed at 5:30 a.m. and woke up at 7:30 a.m. to the infant screaming. Elliott told investigators he woke up to the infant screaming at 5 a.m. and "saw blood everywhere."
Elliott said he got a rag to clean up the baby and saw bloody rat footprints in the crib. Investigators found an infant toboggan "soaked in blood" on the floor of the home and a blood-soaked blanket.
According to reports, Elliott's mother, Regina Barton, said her son told her the baby had been "bitten by a mouse," and that she told the baby's parents they needed to take the infant to the hospital even though they were afraid they would lose custody of her.
Elliott has two other children already in state custody, according to his affidavit of indigency.
The couple waited until Barton arrived at the home before they took the baby to the hospital.
Dr. Karen Farst at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock told investigators that the "rat feeding" would've taken hours to occur and the infant would have been in distress during the process. The couple were either "absent or incapacitated to not have responded," Farst told investigators, according to the affidavit.
The couple told investigators that they knew rats were in the house but did not address the problem.
The brown, wooden-framed, 880-square-foot, one-story house sat Thursday with the doors removed and the windows knocked out. The interior was littered with layers of magazines, trash and children's toys. Several mattresses without bed frames were in every room. Children's drawings were pinned to the walls in some rooms.
The Magnolia City Council voted June 26 to condemn the house and demand that it be demolished. The owner, Jim Brewster -- who owns several properties in the city, has until Aug. 7 to either repair the house or remove it, said Magnolia City Inspector David Nelson.
"If nothing is done, then the city will schedule the home to be demolished," Nelson said. "The cost will go back to the property owner."
According to real estate records, Brewster bought the house in 2000 for $5,000.
Messages left for Brewster were not returned by late Thursday.
Betty Brown, who lives across the street, said the couple were dropped off at the home a couple of weeks before the baby was injured. She didn't know their relationship to the home's occupant, Margie Williams.
Brown said Magnolia as a whole has a large rat population.
"And they don't take care of it," she said.
She pointed to the tin skirting on her mobile home.
"Dogs chase the rats under the houses," she said. She motioned to the fence separating the neighborhood from commercial property. Rats "line up at the bottom of the fence and run on top of it when it starts getting dark," she said.
Nelson, though, insisted that Magnolia does not have a rat problem.
"This is the only rat issue we are aware of," he said. "There have been no issues in the past. This is an isolated case to our knowledge."
Brown was quick to say that Elliott and Shryock should never have been arrested. The rat problem was impossible to control, and the couple had nowhere else to go, she said.
"Neither of them got a job," she said. "You can't find jobs around here. I hope they consider the fact that they're just kids who don't know better and let them go."
State Desk on 07/07/2017