Two women were arrested Monday in connection with the homicide of
a toddler who was found unresponsive in a car during a traffic stop Sunday.
Mica Shoate, who was driving the car, and passenger
Jazmin Williams, both 22, were jailed on first-degree murder complaints in the death of
19-month-old Zamontay Green.
An autopsy ruled Zamontay's cause of death a homicide resulting from
blunt force trauma to the head, Tulsa Police Cpl. Greg Smith said Monday afternoon.
The women were questioned, and their apartment in the 6700 block of South Zunis Avenue was searched Sunday. Shoate and Williams were friends of Zamontay's mother, and
he was left in their care when his mother moved to Arkansas, detectives said.
Officer Mitch Helberg found the boy in the back seat of a white Mercury Sable that had been driven erratically in the 6500 block of South Lewis Avenue about 7 p.m. Sunday, police said.
The car, which was going north on Lewis at 5 to 10 mph, caught Helberg's attention, and he made the traffic stop, Smith said.
Helberg saw Zamontay, realized that he was not breathing and requested backup officers and an ambulance.
Officers Wes Anderson and Luke Flanagan arrived within 30 seconds and began CPR on the child, they told the Tulsa World on Monday.
[...]
Flanagan pulled the boy from the car and laid him across the trunk while Anderson propped the boy's neck up and
attempted to lower his jaw, which was locked, Anderson said.
He felt unsuccessfully for a pulse and found that
the child's skin was cold at the major pulse points, he said.
[...]
EMSA medics declared Zamontay dead at the scene a short time later.
"There's no understanding behind" a crime such as Zamontay's death, Anderson said. "This is a different kind of evil" than what officers generally deal with.
Both officers said they were angry and shaken that an innocent a child would be made to endure what Zamontay went through.
They said the stories Shoate and Williams told at the scene about Zamontay and his condition didn't add up.
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