GRAND HAVEN TWP., MI (WHTC-AM/FM) – A 19-year-old Grand Haven area man is awaiting arraignment on open murder charges stemming from the death of the eight-month-old daughter of his girlfriend.
According to Ottawa County Sheriff’s Detective Captain Mark Bennett, deputies were dispatched to residence in a subdivision off of 144th Avenue south of Mercury Drive last Thursday afternoon on a report that a child was “in seizure.” The suspect was watching the infant while the mother was at work.
Scarlett Burroughs was taken to Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, where she succumbed over the weekend. Investigators “noted some concerning factors at the scene,” according to Bennett, and once the results of a forensic autopsy conducted this morning indicated that the child died “from cranio cerebral trauma,” the case was then ruled a homicide, and the suspect was taken into custody this afternoon without incident.
The name of the suspect will be disclosed following the arraignment, and the case remains under investigation.
