Stephanie Marie Davis and Thomas James Desharnais.Photo: Scottsdale Police Department (2)
An Arizona grandmother and her husband are facing murder charges after paramedics who responded to a motel where the couple was staying found an 11-year-old boy with “significant injuries” who wasn’t breathing.
A second child found in the care of Davis and her husband, 33-year-old Thomas James Desharnais, was turned over to the Department of Child Services, police said.
“Those kids were always taken care of,” Davis said Tuesday during a Maricopa County court hearing conducted via video, adding that any evidence to the contrary was “literally just circumstantial,” reportsAZFamily.com.
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AZFamily.com reportedthat Davis claimed the boy had hit himself in the head with a wrench while the family was watching a movie and then went to the bathroom and cut his genitals with a paring knife. She said she took the wrench from him and hid it under a mattress so he could not get it, and took the bloody knife to the kitchen and washed it.
Police say neither she nor her husband did anything to get the boy medical treatment, according to AZFamily.com.
PEOPLE was unable to immediately obtain or verify the court documents.
Desharnais allegedly told investigators that Davis had pinched and bent the boys' fingers with pliers and hit them in the head with a wooden broom, but that he did not intercede, according to the court documents.
Those documents allege that police found pliers and a broom handle in the motel room, as well as a paring knife and a wrench stained with what looked like blood residue under a mattress.
Officers first responded to the medical call about the boy not breathing and being unresponsive at the Extended Stay America around 4:50 p.m. Sunday, reportsKTAR radio.
Jordan Barclay, who lives at the motel where the incident occurred,told AZFamily.com: “Breaks my heart, and the fact that I’m just on the other side of the building when the soul passed, it feels weird and heartbreaking.”
Davis and Desharnais were arrested and booked on charges of first-degree homicide and two counts of child abuse. Davis is being held on a $3.5 million cash bond, police said. Desharnais is being held on a $1.5 million cash bond.
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An attorney or attorneys who might speak for them was not immediately named.
Courtney Lage, a former motel employee, said she had twice called the Department of Child Services to report concerns about the boys' well-being under the adults' care, reports AZFamily.com
“I worked in the office, so they would come up and pay and what not,” she said. “When the children were in there I never saw their eyes, they were always covered. They had baseball hats. She would never allow them to talk directly.”
She added: “I don’t know what happened to those poor little boys but I always say, you get that feeling when something isn’t right and there was something not right.”
source: people.com
