Mom Arrested After Brutal Beating at Hands of Husband Sues Cops

A judge found Stephanie Patterson, 23, not guilty in the child endangerment case following a trial nearly eight months after she was arrested. But for seven of those months, she said, she lost custody of her two sons, 2-year-old Dakhari and 1-year-old Jaiyden.

“His first word was ‘mama’ and I missed it because I didn’t have custody,” Patterson said of her younger son. “Any kind of pain you go through can’t compare to the pain of not living with your children.”

Police said they were sent to the Star Inn on West Jefferson Street the evening of Jan. 1 to investigate a report of someone screaming.

A housekeeper opened a room and officers found a year-old baby sitting on a bed and wearing nothing but a urine and feces-filled diaper, police said.

The room was “filthy” and a “shambles,” police said, with cigarette butts and cups containing alcohol left on the floor, overflowing trashcans, garbage and cigarette butts dumped in the sink, razors on the floor, and other debris lying around.

The place also had an “awful smell,” police said, and there were numerous baby bottles left about, the contents spoiled to various degrees. The baby reportedly tried to drink from the bottles and pick up razors during the few minutes officers were in the room.

During his short time there, an officer noticed something moving and pushed aside some pillows to find a second child, this one 5-months-old, police said. The younger baby also reportedly wore nothing but a T-shirt and soiled diaper.

Patterson denied that the room was filthy and said it was only in disarray because her husband, Peji Patterson, “tore that place apart” while he was beating her, dragging her around by the hair and biting her shoulder.

Stephanie Patterson said she had confronted her husband about a woman’s disposable razor she found in one of his pockets. She accused him of cheating on her. Peji Patterson, 24, erupted and beat her so severely it took four staples to close a gash on the side of her head.

Stephanie Patterson said she can’t remember leaving the motel room and getting in her car, but that was where the police found her bleeding and, she says, dazed and she thinks concussed.

Stephanie Patterson said the officers asked her who was watching the children. She believed their father was, she said, and told them so. But Peji Patterson had actually made a run for it, leaving the children alone. He was captured later at the Marathon station on Glenwood Avenue.

Peji Patterson pleaded guilty in March to child endangerment and felony aggravated battery. In May, he was sentenced to six months in jail but by that time he had already served nearly five months of it.

Peji Patterson was not out of jail two months when he was arrested in August for allegedly violating a protective order obtained by Stephanie Patterson. He remains locked up while his case is pending. The couple is in the midst of a divorce.

Stephanie Patterson said a prosecutor pushed her to plead guilty as well and when she refused, the two counts of child endangerment she was charged with were upped to 12 counts.

The spokesman for the state’s attorney’s office, Charles B. Pelkie, said the original two counts were just to “get the ball rolling” with the case and that it is “routine” for more detailed charges to be filed along the way. Of the 12 counts filed in July, one for each of the children alleges that the boys had access to razor blades, alcohol, prescription medication, a lighter, and a “rotten baby bottle,” and that they existed in “deplorable living conditions.”

“From the beginning, our prosecutor sat down with the defense attorney and said, ‘We’re willing to discuss a plea agreement, but if we move forward with the trial, we’ll move forward with counts that reflect the dangerous conditions, the horrific conditions, in that hotel room,’” Pelkie said.

“The defense was aware of our position from the beginning,” he said.

In addition to losing her children, Stephanie Patterson said her entire family turned its collective back on her after she arrested. She has since reconciled with half her relatives, she said, but the rest remain estranged from her. And while her federal lawsuit names only two police officers, Dave Remer and Shawn Washer, as defendants, her attorney, John Schrock, said he would have also sued the state’s attorney’s office if wasn’t prohibited by law from doing so.

“To this day, the state’s attorney’s office, which has a domestic violence program and all these resources available to domestic violence victims, has yet to reach out to her,” Schrock said. “It’s somewhat hypocritical to have this domestic violence program and these resources and not to reach out to her.”

Pelkie vehemently denied that Stephanie Patterson was not accommodated and he said she was actually offered an abundance of assistance.

“Our victim advocates and domestic violence counselors went above and beyond the obligations they have to provide these services,” he said. “Our prosecutor worked very closely with the victim in this case. They kept her advised of every aspect of the prosecution as it progressed through the courts. Our victim advocates alone personally worked with her and had contact with her, whether it was by phone, in the courts or in our office, 15 times over the course of two cases involving this defendant.”

Pelkie went on to say that the “whole gamut of services that are available to victims of domestic violence, we directed her to those services and told her how to take advantage of those services. They responded to every call that she put into our office.”

Schrock invited a representative of the state’s attorney’s office to apologize to his client.

“They’re welcome to call me and offer an apology to Stephanie,” he said, “and we’ll accept it.”