A newborn baby was mauled to death by two dogs in a Rochester attic while his teen parents got high downstairs, authorities said.
Sulamain Hawkins and Anastasia Weaver, both 19, pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges Thursday after allegedly leaving their 3-month-old baby alone while they smoked marijuana outside.
The unspeakable tragedy unfolded on Aug. 3 when the couple put little Sulamain Hawkins Jr. to sleep on the attic floor before going outside to toke up, Rochester police said.
The pair were allegedly gone for up to an hour while one or both of their pit bull-type dogs attacked the newborn.
They returned to find the injured baby. Junior was rushed to the hospital, where he died from “severe trauma to his body,” officials said.
“The allegations here, we feel, support the recklessness that a reasonable person in these defendants’ situations would not have acted the way they did,” Assistant DA Sara VanStrydonck said in court.
“They knew a risk and they consciously disregarded that risk.”
Hawkins and Weaver were not arrested until Wednesday, and the mother spent her last week of freedom sharing a disturbing mix of grieving and sexually promiscuous social media posts.
Prosecutors said the horror occurred in an acquaintance’s rented house and that the dogs were known to be kept in the attic. It is also where the young family had been crashing.
The tenants have since been evicted and the dogs have been euthanized.
Hawkins and Weaver were remanded with bail set at $15,000.
They are due back in court Aug. 27.
With Post wires
