Zachariah Yancey

 

 

 

 

 

In 2008, before Zachariah was born, Jefferson County Human Services got a report that Danielle Yancey was neglecting her older son and raising him in an unsafe environment. Social workers determined the accusations were “unfounded.” However, the case worker that interviewed Danielle at county offices and never saw her home and failed to ask about allegations that she was smoking marijuana in front of her child.

 

In August 2009 Brandon Yancey Jr. was alone with his son watching TV while his wife was working at Jack in the Box. Zachariah Yancey was having trouble breathing, his father called 911. At the hospital, little Zachariah was fighting for his life., doctors treating Zachariah found three healing rib fractures, fluid, swelling and bleeding in his brain and hemorrhages in both eyes.

 

Police interviewed his family members, and Zachariah parents’ friends. They learned that the couple had a rocky relationship. Danielle once sought a restraining order against Brandon and that Brandon had doubts about whether he was Zachariah’s father. Brandon and Danielle and their kids sometimes lived with Brandon’s dad, sometimes with Danielle’s mom, sometimes together, sometimes not.

 

Brandon told police him and Zachariah, who was swaddled and lying in the crook of his arm, fell asleep. “I rolled over sometime in my sleep and woke up on top of him.” Yancey said the sound of Zachariah gasping for air woke him. Brandon later told police Zachariah had been fussy that afternoon. Yancey, said when he laid Zachariah in his bassinet, the baby let out “a blood curdling scream,” so he picked him up and tried to comfort him.

 

Police who went to the Arvada home where Brandon and Zachariah had been sleeping  they described the home as a “pit,” and reported seeing a dead mouse in a trap and a hunting knife within easy reach of Zachariah’s two year old brother. Officers told Yancey the injuries didn’t match what he said happened, and, according to the arrest warrant affidavit, asked if he had gotten upset with his son. “I never got upset with him. I never do that. You don’t do that, that’s f---d up. People who do that deserve to get their asses shot. Period. I am very strict with that you leave infants alone. You leave children alone.”

 

The next day, just shy of three months old Zachariah was taken off life support and died an hour later. Brandon Yancey pleaded guilty to child abuse resulting in death and was sentenced to 21 years in prison.

 

 

 

 

 

http://childfatalities.denverpost.com/#id=70&name=YanceyZachariah