Hallucinating Mom Gets Nine Years

[torque]

Hallucinating mom gets 9 years for killing son
Sarah Sacheli
Windsor Star

Thursday, January 24, 2008


Tammie Steinhoff was high on cough medicine and hallucinating when she stabbed her two-year-old son 39 times then, holding the dying child in her arms, ran repeatedly into traffic on Huron Church Road, Superior Court heard Thursday.

Steinhoff, 32, was sentenced to nine years in prison for killing her son, River, on June 29, 2005. Given the standard two-for-one credit for the 19 months she has spent in jail, she was sentenced to an additional five years and 10 months in a federal penitentiary.

Facts of the case read into the court record by assistant Crown attorney Jennifer Holmes painted a picture of a chaotic scene on Huron Church Road where cars and transport trucks were slamming on their brakes and swerving to avoid a woman walking in the roadway and jumping in front of on-coming vehicles. One man thought a deer had run out in front of his car. After he managed to swerve and stop, he realized it was a woman holding what appeared to be a lifeless child in one arm. She had a knife in her free hand and was yelling, "Look what they made me do. They made me kill my child."

It was fireworks night, with the busiest traffic of the year.

When police arrived, Steinhoff threw River four feet to the ground and ran away. An officer tackled her, she struggled and stabbed him in the back, cursing and yelling, "I hope you burn in hell."

Back at Steinhoff's apartment in the basement of her grandparent's home, there was a serrated knife and a bloody comforter on the loveseat where she repeatedly stabbed her son. In the apartment police also found two empty bottles of Koffex cough syrup which court heard contains the opiate-based hallucinogen dextromethorphan, or DXM as it is known to addicts on the street.

Steinhoff was addicted to the over-the-counter drug, court heard. She knew its effects, and knowingly abused it.

On Huron Church Road, River was still alive, moaning and breathing shallowly. He was rushed to Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital, then transferred to Children's Hospital in Detroit where he died from his injuries. Steinhoff had punctured both his lungs, his liver, kidneys and carotid artery. He died from massive blood loss.

Steinhoff had been charged with first-degree murder. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Charges of attempted murder for stabbing the police officer were dropped.

The guilty plea was a demonstration of Steinhoff's remorse, said Justice Terry Patterson. He agreed with the joint recommendation from the Crown and defence lawyers that nine years was an "appropriate sentence" to show society's denunciation for such crimes.

In a statement read in court by the prosecutor, River's father said he will never forgive Steinhoff for killing their child. Don Parish said he was "always prepared to care for River," but Steinhoff denied him access to the boy.

Parish's mother, Lori Lauzon said she called the Children's Aid Society after a frightening phone conversation she had with Steinhoff in which Steinhoff told a supportive Lauzon to leave her alone. "Children's Aid left me with a false sense of security," she said. "They only went once, then closed the file."

Speaking through tears, Lauzon referred to her grandson by the pet name she had for him, Grandma's Little River. While others in the courtroom, including police officers wiped their eyes, Steinhoff sat in the prisoner's box showing no emotion. Once, she shot a glare in her mother's direction after the Crown attorney told the court Steinhoff's parents secretly allowed River's father to visit the boy at their home.

Steinhoff, wearing makeup and dressed in a black suit, stood when asked by the judge if she would like to address the court. "Your Honour, all I can say is I'm very, very sorry," she said, speaking barely above a whisper.

Court heard Steinhoff grew up in a dysfunctional family where her parents were alcoholics and always in and out of jail. Steinhoff was physically and sexually abused and, as an adult, was prone to get involved with abusive partners. She has two other children who live with their father. She lost a fourth child in pregnancy, she says, after being beaten by her partner.

A psychiatric report presented in court said she suffers from a borderline personality disorder and depression.

"At the time of offence, she was not in her right mind," said defence lawyer Laura Joy. Pointing to the fact the autopsy on River showed no signs of prior abuse, Joy said Steinhoff "loved her child very much and will never quit loving him."

Steinhoff's remorse is real, Joy said. "This is something she will live with every day of her life. She will never forgive herself."
© The Windsor Star 2008

source

[Nivra ha-Rishon]

She was obviously already crazy.

[Rigor]

Koffex is the best tasting syrup I've ever had.

[Hot Rod Zoidberg]

More propaganda? First you don't get OEV's, second the woman probably had underlying mental problems that pyschadelics often bring out, third, stop calling every dexer an addict.

[Companion Cube]

you can get OEV's
i agree
some are (i am)

I'm kinda pissed that this happened. I hope DXM dosen't start to get the same bad rep PCP gets for simmilar incidences.

[The JoKer]

That is truly fucked.

[Hot Rod Zoidberg]

I mean you don't really see things that aren't there like monsters and shit, you might have patterns of colors and shit. I mean did they even do a blood test or just assume based on the empty bottles? She had borderline depression and was abused. You can go nuts without drugs, and seems this woman did, it's just people seems to like to blame drugs nowadays.

[Kaiserin]

Steinhoff, 32, was sentenced to nine years in prison for killing her son, River, on June 29, 2005. Given the standard two-for-one credit for the 19 months she has spent in jail, she was sentenced to an additional five years and 10 months in a federal penitentiary.

Bullshit, they would have thrown a man in jail for the rest of his life for that. Talk about corrupt legal bias, somebody clearly unstable was given the kid in the first place because they had 'maternal instinct' or some dumb shit like that.

[//.The_Unforgiven]

This really disturbed me.

[Murzor]

Originally posted by Cookie1456@Jan 25 2008, 11:48 PM
I mean you don't really see things that aren't there like monsters and shit, you might have patterns of colors and shit.

you can certainly have full on realistic hallucinations on sufficient doses of dxm (especially during binges (and plateau sigma)), in fact i've had them before.

i agree with the general consensus that she likely had mental problems prior to using dxm, and it likely tipped her over the edge.

i also take slight offense to the labeling all non-medicinal dxm users as addicts, but i realize that a significant proportion of us are.

this event generally saddens me.