Five-year-old implicated in drowning of toddler

Officers said the girl, who was left with other children in the care of a teenager, was considered a possible suspect in the toddler’s death last week, raising complicated legal questions about how a court could proceed with a case against such a young suspect.

Bart Lubow, the director of the juvenile justice strategy group at the Annie E Casey Foundation, a national child advocacy organisation based in Baltimore, said a five-year-old is incapable of forming intent, and is not likely even to know what drowning means.

“You can imagine a child responding to other children’s crying by saying, ‘I know how to stop that.’ But the notion that there was intent there is silly,” Mr Lubow said. “For a five-year-old, this is well beyond the pale of what our criminal or delinquency laws are intended to address.”

Police said the five-year-old was not arrested, and the case was referred to the county’s family courts division.

Police originally ruled the death accidental, but said that changed after social workers reported that the girl told them she brought the toddler into the bathroom and drowned him.