Maryland’s State Attorney, Anthony Covington has announced that Romechia Simms, the mother of 3-year-old Ji’Aire Donnell Lee, has been indicted after being found on May 22, pushing her son’s dead body in a playground swing. The news comes nearly four months after the incident, with Simms now facing up to 45 years for first-degree child abuse, manslaughter, and child abuse.
Romechia Simms, 24 years old, was pushing her son for two days on the playground swing, exposing both herself and her son to the elements. Neither her son nor herself ate food or drank water for the two days in question. Ji’Aire died from extreme dehydration and low body temperature. The mother and son were not found until the morning of May 22, after someone called the police and reported a woman pushing a baby in a playground swing at strange hours of the night.
Simms had started taking medication to treat an undisclosed mental illness and had recently been notified by a District of Columbia family court, that she would be splitting custody with the boy’s father. The reason for the custody battle had to do with the father informing the courts that Simms had behaved erratically, jumping out of a moving taxi with Ji’Aire, earlier in the year. In court proceedings, Simms acknowledged that she had in fact had a mental breakdown which caused her to jump from the cab with the boy; however, she assured the judge that she had started taking medication to deal with the issue:
This breakdown that I had was the first that I have ever had in my life and I truly believe it was from an extreme amount of stress weighing heavy on me. I am now in a much better productive space.
Just a few months later, Romechia Simms killed her son. The question now, is whether her actions were a result of another mental breakdown, or if she intentionally killed her son in that playground. The prosecution believes Simms intentionally caused harm to her son, while her mother, Vontasha Simms, believes her daughter lost control again.
No one in their right mind is going to sit out there for two days in the elements,” said Vontasha Simms. “Somehow, somewhere within that episode, time stopped for her.
The trial is set to begin in January 2016.
