Arkansas Mother Pleads Guilty in Tragic Case of Boy Found Dead Under Floorboards After Drowning in Toilet
A 30-year-old mother from Arkansas has admitted that she drowned and killed her son.
Ashley Rolland got 40 years in the Arkansas Department of Corrections after pleading guilty on August 8 to two counts of permitting abuse of a minor. This was because in 2022, her boyfriend drowned her 5-year-old son in the toilet as a punishment and hurt her 6-year-old daughter, according to a press release from State Police.
An affidavit from NBC says that in December 2022, Lee County officers were called to a home on Front Street where Rolland brought her daughter out. The child’s head looked like it had been hurt and had crusted over. The mother said that Blu Rolland, her son, wasn’t at the house.
The girl was taken to Forrest City Hospital, where doctors found that she had been badly burned.
The affidavit says that Rolland’s mother told the police that Blu might have died in the defendant’s house. When the police went into the house, they found the boy wrapped in several layers of plastic bags under the floorboards. He was found on December 16, 2022, which would have been his sixth birthday.
Arkansas State Police said, “Based on initial findings, it’s thought that the boy died from injuries he got at home.” Rolland is said to have told police that her son had died three months earlier, on September 9, 2022.
Blu “made her boyfriend Nathan Bridges angry” by biting his finger when Bridges put it in his mouth, according to the statement. Bridges is said to have killed the child in the toilet as a punishment.
Rolland said she went into the bathroom and saw her son having trouble breathing. She also said that her son’s body looked limp. Bridges was the one who hid her son under the floorboards after he died, she also told the police.
The injuries her daughter got were also said to have been caused by Bridges, who held the girl’s “head and upper torso under hot water in the bathtub.” Bridges would beat Rolland’s daughter with hot water when she behaved badly, according to reports.
Police in the state say that Rolland and Bridges were first charged with murder, abuse of a body, tampering with physical evidence, and putting a child in danger.
Rolland was given a 40-year term, but Bridges pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and first-degree battery in July and was given 60 years in prison by the Arkansas Department of Corrections.