Mother jailed after boy's leg amputated
A woman has been jailed for at least five years after pleading guilty to tying her son to a doorknob so tightly that he developed gangrene and lost a leg.
Tanekeia Justice, 30, of Durham, North Carolina, was sentenced Friday to five to seven years on a charge of felonious child abuse involving serious and permanent injury.
The four-year-old malnourished boy was tied to a doorknob in 2004 to prevent him from attempting to feed himself at night, prosecutor Mitchell Garrell said.
When the boy tried to free himself, the restraining cord wound more tightly around his leg and cut off the blood supply, Garrell said.
“It was horrifying,” Garrell said. “That child screamed all night long and no one helped him.”
Defence lawyer Tom Eagen said Justice was working when the child was tied to the doorknob, and that her then-boyfriend and current husband was the guilty party.
“The moral of the story? Be careful of your kids and be careful who you leave them with,” Eagen said.
Her husband, Randall Hargraves, and the boy’s grandmother, Desiree Justice, who advised the couple to treat the boy’s injuries themselves, have also pleaded guilty in the case.
