Mother agrees to plea deal in connection to son s death
Previous 33-count indictment that included a murder charge will be dismissed as part of negotiated plea
The Daily Jeffersonian
A mother previously indicted on 33 felony counts in connection with the death of her 6-year-old son avoided a March 1 trail date Friday by pleading no contest to four counts of endangering children.
The pleas by Tierra N. (Mounts) Rockaway, 30, to the second-degree felony offenses included in a new bill of information filed Friday as part of a negotiated plea approved by all parties involved with the case.
A motion seeking to dismiss the previous 33-count indictment charging Rockaway with murder, an unclassified felony; engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, a first-degree felony; permitting child abuse, a first-degree felony; 15 counts of endangering children, second-degree felonies; five counts of felonious assault, second-degree felonies; five counts of endangering children, third-degree felo
With every line she drew with her colored pencils, with every stroke of a marker and chalk that she used to make the little girl with rosy cheeks and dark, curly hair come to life, Sheila Luther erased another sliver of her own long-lingering guilt.
Having raised her own daughter in an unstable environment one filled with anger, addiction and spousal abuse Luther cries even today as she recounts how decades ago she was too consumed by her own lifestyle to see the damage being done to her child.
A book to comfort children of mothers in prison
“My daughter at age 3 used to ask me if she was a bad girl, and she would ask me that because I was a bad mother,” said Luther, now 68 and living in Dayton. “I went to prison at age 41, and my daughter was an adult by then, but it was already too late. She’d already had a lifetime of hurt.”
Maggie Haas leaned forward in her chair and squinted through the welling tears that already clouded her vision as the Zoom boxes popped up like a photo-filled tic-tac-toe board on the television screen in a prison meeting room.
She peered more closely once, twice, then again and again. She really couldn’t believe that there they were, her three beautiful children whose faces she hadn’t seen in a year in a half. She had asked them over phone calls to participate in this Bridges of Love project, a new healing songwriting program run by the local nonprofit, We Amplify Voices (WAV), that recently was piloted at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. But when it was time for the first session in November, Haas’s heart hadn’t let her get her hopes up that the kids would actually appear.
On behalf of the Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio, CCNO Executive Director Dennis Sullivan filed suit against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) in the Ohio Supreme Court Wednesday afternoon.
The underlying dispute is over who should accept the risks of COVID-19 exposure among inmates who have received prison sentences for felony convictions. The pre-pandemic Ohio Revised Code states that county jails like CCNO have five working days to transfer inmates to a state prison once they have received their sentence. But ODRCâs post-pandemic âOrder 20-01,â issued in March, allows state prisons to refuse inmates with COVID-19 symptoms or a history of COVID-19 exposure. That is, if one inmate from one county jail tests positive for COVID-19, ODRC may refuse to accept all future inmates from that jail.
On behalf of the Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio, CCNO Executive Director Dennis Sullivan filed suit against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) in the Ohio Supreme Court Wednesday afternoon.
The underlying dispute is over who should accept the risks of COVID-19 exposure among inmates who have received prison sentences for felony convictions. The pre-pandemic Ohio Revised Code states that county jails like CCNO have five working days to transfer inmates to a state prison once they have received their sentence. But ODRCâs post-pandemic âOrder 20-01,â issued in March, allows state prisons to refuse inmates with COVID-19 symptoms or a history of COVID-19 exposure. That is, if one inmate from one county jail tests positive for COVID-19, ODRC may refuse to accept all future inmates from that jail.