A Florida woman has been jailed for one year and ordered to serve three years probation after posing her newborn son in a series of horrifying photos, The Smoking Gun reports.
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Brittany Lester (pictured) was sentenced on Tuesday after being convicted of child abuse charges. The photos, which were taken last August, show her then five-week-old being held inside of a toilet, sitting in a dresser drawer and in other dangerous poses.
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The St. Petersburg Police Department learned of the photos from the infant’s father who said Lester texted him the images after he left the motel where they, along with the infant and their 3-year-old, were staying.
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The 22-year-old man reportedly told cops that he had broken up with Lester, but they were trying to be civil for the sake of their children. But civility quickly faded after Lester reportedly checked the man’s phone and determined that another woman had been calling him. The man then left the motel room and began receiving the disturbing photos to his phone soon after.
The Smoking Gun has more:
Taken inside the motel room, the 13 images showed the diapered newborn in a variety of dangerous situations, according to a St. Petersburg Police Department report. For example, the child was seen squeezed between the mattress and boxspring; “lying inside a dresser drawer crying”; lying under the bed; sitting in the toilet; and inside the trash can(both sitting and upside down).
The child was not injured during Lester’s malicious photo session.
Most of the images sent by Lester were accompanied by threatening texts, though cops redacted the messages from documents released pursuant to an open records request. Police provided black and white photocopies of Lester’s photos, and placed a white box over the newborn’s face.
A police evidence photo (seen at left) shows the interior of the motel room where Lester staged the unsettling photographs.
When confronted by police officers, Lester “admitted to taking the photos. Lester advised she committed these actions to get a response” from the newborn’s father. As he received the photos, the man sent Lester a series of text messages in response, warning “I am sendid what u said 2 da police,” “Da police comein,” and “U going 2 jail.”
After Lester was arrested, her two children were put in state custody. It is not clear if the children are still with the state or with family.
