BuzzFeed Domestic Violence Investigation: How Victims Are Imprisoned for Their Abusers’ Crimes.
On October 13, 2006, Alonzo Turner murdered his girlfriend’s 3-year-old son, Titches. Over the course of that day, according to court records reported by BuzzFeed’s Alex Campbell, Turner whipped Titches with a belt, threw him against a wall, grabbed him by his neck, smeared his face in his breakfast, stood on his chest, dragged him to the bathroom, pushed his head into the toilet bowl, kicked him repeatedly in the stomach, then forced him to pace back and forth across the living room. He threatened to kill Titches’ mother, Arlena Lindley, if she tried to get the boy out of the house, and locked Lindley and a friend out on the porch; soon after Lindley finally convinced Turner to let her back in the house, Titches stopped breathing.
The murder was a culmination of months of abuse Turner executed against Lindley and her son: Since she began dating Turner earlier that year, Lindley would later testify, he had pulled her hair, choked her, sat on her, and pushed her to the ground in public; after she removed a bullet from his gun and threw it in the yard, he forced her to strip naked and search for it in the dark on her hands and knees; when she tried to escape with her son, he threw her in a car trunk and drove her back home, or called and threatened to kill Lindley’s family if she didn’t return. (As in many domestic violence cases, Lindley said that Turner first presented as sweet and protective before he turned violent and controlling.) After Titches’ murder, Turner was sentenced to life in prison; Lindley was sentenced to 45 years in prison for child abuse by “omission,” or failing to protect her son from Turner’s abuse. When Turner threatened to kill Lindley for trying to protect her son, the police said, she should have called 911.
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