CCSO

• Name: Bartrum Tosha M.
• Charge: AGGRAVATED CHILD ABUSE
• Residence: Naples
• Age: 20

COLLIER COUNTY — A frustrated teenage mother who threw a bottle of formula at her 6-month-old baby’s head, shook her as she sat in her car seat, then tossed her on a bed was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in a state prison followed by a decade of probation.

Collier Circuit Judge Fred Hardt imposed the term on Tosha M. Bartrum, now 20, of Manchester Drive, after a roughly 2 1/2-hour hearing in which Assistant State Attorney Lisa Mead sought 10 years and defense attorney Erik Lombillo urged sentencing as a youthful offender, probation or a more lenient term for a teen mother ill-equipped to handle twin babies.

Reading from a probable cause affidavit, the judge detailed what occurred and why it wasn’t an isolated event, as Lombillo had argued. The affidavit said Bartrum woke up on Dec. 18, 2007, when her babies wouldn’t stop crying and she got upset.

“She threw a bottle with formula and hit (the daughter) on the head,” the judge read, adding that it caused a bump. “Tosha stated that she grabbed (the daughter’s) car seat and vigorously shook it, she then picked the daughter up and threw her onto the bed.”

The judge noted that she then gave her babies and paperwork to her younger sister, Courtney Burnett, saying she “couldn’t handle it anymore,” and then heard they’d been taken to a hospital. Hardt read aloud, noting that she’d admitted doing the same thing to her son’s car seat in the past and he had a black eye recently, but she’d been drinking that night so she’s unsure how he got it.

Bartrum pleaded no contest to aggravated child abuse, a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in a state prison, and had left her sentence in the hands of the judge, who gave her credit for time served in the jail since her arrest on Jan. 3, 2008. Mead’s plea offer was for 10 years, which she’d turned down. The lowest term on her sentencing scoresheet was 6 1/2 years, considering the baby’s severe injuries.

A report by Investigator Frank Pilarski, of the Collier County Sheriff’s Office, says the baby was flown to Miami Children’s Hospital on Dec. 18, 2007, with two hematomas, an acute hematoma, bruising and a retinal injury. Witnesses said they saw a handprint on her face, bruises, and after she screamed, she cocked her head, her body got stiff and she “appeared to be dying.”

As Bartrum and her mother, Kimberly Burnett, who sat in court behind her, both cried, the judge warned Bartrum she couldn’t contact her child while in prison or during the 10 years of probation — not even by e-mail. Mead had played jailhouse phone calls between Bartrum and her mother to show proof they’d “plotted” to have her grandmother apply to adopt the babies and then they’d move to Indiana to be with them.

“You can’t send her a birthday card,” Hardt cautioned. “You can’t send her a Christmas present. Until that child is an adult, that child needs to have a normal environment. It seems she has loving parents.”

The daughter, who will turn 2 years old on Thursday with her twin brother are in a “medical foster home” in LaBelle, with a registered nurse and her husband, who can take care of medical problems if they crop up. The foster mother, Cathy Burley, testified however, that the child hadn’t had seizures, although a neurologist warned it was a possibility due to her head trauma.

Lombillo used Burley as a reluctant defense witness to show the judge the baby is doing well. Bartrum, his other defense witness, took deep breaths before she sobbed and apologized as she sat at the defense table in her orange jail jumpsuit. She’d quietly cried throughout most of the hearing and her eyes were swollen and red.

“I’d just like to say that I’m sorry,” Bartrum said, crying. “I’m sorry to my family. I’m sorry to my kids. No words can explain how it feels. I just want everyone to know that I’m sorry.”

Mead presented the jailhouse phone calls to support her argument that Bartrum needed a long sentence to prevent her from trying to see the baby, although she’d terminated her parental rights. In the phone calls, her mother’s conversation was filled with curses and reassurances to her daughter that her mother, Verna, would get the babies and they’d all move to Indiana. In some conversations, Bartrum bawled as her mother reassured her it appeared she’d soon get out of jail, where she’d been since her arrest.

On one tape, Burnett warned her daughter she couldn’t tell Lombillo about their plan and also added, “Lisa Mead cannot hear anything like that.”

Bartrum and her sister, Courtney, spent some of their childhood under the care of their grandmother and Courtney also has lost her children, Mead told the judge.

Mead also presented testimony by the child’s guardian ad litem, Joanne Wilson, a Florida Gulf Coast University genetics professor, who testified the babies were now in a good environment, doing well and she hoped they’d remain there.

“Do you believe if Kimberly Burnett and the rest of that clan had access to them they’d have the same environment?” Mead asked.

“I have concerns,” replied Wilson, who had listened to eight hours of curse-laden jailhouse phone calls as part of her review of the case.

Mead pushed for 10 years. “There’s just something wrong with someone who would do this,” Mead argued. “... My hope is that by putting her in prison the children will be 9 or 10 years old when she gets out and they will be set in their ways and her interference will be minimal.”

She pointed out it wasn’t an isolated incident and that the baby had a handprint on her head, two subdural hematomas, and her brother had a black eye and old bruises.

Lombillo argued that Bartrum wasn’t mature and even admitted in dependency court that she was ill-equipped to handle motherhood. He blamed the incident on alcohol and pills and sought a “downward departure” in sentencing — less than sentencing guidelines recommended. In addition to sentencing as a youthful offender, which carries a maximum of six years in a youth prison, he suggested a long period of probation, pointing out Bartrum had already spent 17 months in county jail, was remorseful, and had learned a lesson.

“This is just a sad case where she has lost her children forever,” Lombillo said, noting that she had no criminal record and celebrated her 20th birthday in jail.

The judge ruled the facts didn’t support Bartrum getting sentenced as a youthful offender, or getting a downward departure from sentencing guidelines. Lombillo filed a motion for a public defender for Bartrum’s appeal and Bartrum cried and hugged her mother before she was led off.

Mead said afterward, “I’m very happy with the sentence, just because I know the kids will be safe.”

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