Man charged with child’s death

Press, 1 July 1985, Page 10

Man charged with child’s death

NZPA-Reuter Miami The Miami police yesterday charged a man with murdering his irreversibly brain-damaged, three-year-old daughter by shooting her dead while she lay in a hospital crib. The police alleged that Charles Griffith, aged 24, had walked into the nursery at Miami Children’s Hospital on Saturday, leaned over his daughter’s bed and fired two shots from a small hand-gun. Joy Griffith died almost instantly.

Griffith, a projectionist at a movie theatre, then put down the gun and surrendered to hospital guards, police said. Police said Griffith was apparently distraught over his daughter’s irreversible comatose condition. “At the moment, we’re looking at this as a probable mercy killing,” said a police spokesman. “It’s a tragic situation

The blonde, blue-eyed child was brain-damaged in

October when she was nearly strangled after her neck got caught in the - footrest of a reclining chair at her grandmother’s Miami home. She had been climbing on to the recliner to watch television cartoons. Griffith and his wife had filed a SUS2S million ($53.25 million) negligence lawsuit against the chair’s manufacturer. The case is pending.

The girl had lain motionless since October in a coma at the hospital nur-

sery, receiving nourishment and medication from a tube to her stomach and another attached to her ankle. Doctors said that she probably felt no pain when she was shot.

Several days before the killing, Griffith had stopped going to work and dropped contacts with friends and family members, the police said. He is separated from the child’s mother.

Griffith was expected to be arraigned today on a first-degree murder charge.