Correction: It wasn’t entirely that the baby wouldn’t shut up during the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game Dec. 7 that caused a 22-year-old man to snap its neck. It was also the fact that Tre’viance Markese Walker, of Norman, Okla., lost 200 bucks betting an Oklahoma State win in the so-called Bedlam game. The final score was Oklahoma, 33, Oklahoma State, 24.
And the final score for 5-month-old “J.B.,” as the baby is known to the media, was a hematoma on his brain, revealed during an autopsy on Dec. 9
So who hasn’t gotten so upset over a football bet that he hasn’t snatched his girlfriend’s blubbering infant child out of his playpen, gripped his skull, and slammed him into the floor?
Initially, Walker claimed that he couldn’t have done such a thing, although he was short on explanations for how the child, who was in his care, had sustained a head trauma so severe that he was unresponsive and bleeding from one ear when paramedics arrived on the scene. By the time J.B. reached the hospital, he was dead.
And last week, Walker finally came clean. According to Oklahoma City Fox affiliate KOKH, he admitted to police that he had killed the baby in a moment of frustration. He is now in custody in the Cleveland County Jail.
Capt. Tom Easley of the Norman Police told the station:
The injury, considering the child was less than 6 months of age, is indicative of either a shaking or jerking motion or a dropping motion.
As of Monday the District Attorney’s office hadn’t yet filed charges against Walker, but the arrest warrant was for murder in the first degree.
