It comes after she denied ever hurting him as he lived his life with severe disabilities due to a brain hemorrhage.
A former babysitter — Terry McKirchy — pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Wednesday following the death of a man in 2019 who she babysat as an infant 40 years ago.
According to HuffPost, the 62-year-old accepted a plea deal for the death of Benjamin Dowling — who she was accused of disabling — finally admitting that she hit him numerous times as an infant, AP News reported.
Mr Dowling died at 35 years old after a life of severe disabilities due to a brain hemorrhage in 1984; he was 5 months old at the time.
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While investigators initially believed that McKirchy caused injuries to Dowling as an infant by shaking him, she continued to deny hurting him.
Following the hearing on Wednesday, Mr Dowling’s parents, Rae and Joe, said they were glad that McKirchy finally admitted to hurting their son.
“She will have to live with this,” Rae Dowling told AP News. “We just have to be strong and move forward,” Joe Dowling added.
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Benjamin never walked, talked or fed himself while he was alive and spent his years in a wheelchair.
The motive for McKirchy’s actions were discovered during the hearing. In a letter of apology read to Dowling’s parents by her attorney, assistant public defender David Fry, McKirchy admitted to being overwhelmed with the number of children she was babysitting at the time.
“It was in a state of impulse and anger that I struck Benjamin while he and other children were crying,” she wrote, per AP News. “Your life and Benjamin’s life were truly harmed by me and I am truly sorry.”
Prior to the plea deal, she had been charged with first-degree murder and faced a possible life sentence.
