A 30-year-old mother from Arkansas has admitted her guilt after her son tragically drowned.
Ashley Rolland pleaded guilty on August 8 to two counts of permitting abuse of a minor after her boyfriend fatally drowned her 5-year-old son in a toilet as punishment and injured her 6-year-old daughter in 2022, the State Police said in a release. The Arkansas Department of Corrections sentenced Ashley Rolland to 40 years.
According to a December 2022 affidavit (from NBC), Lee County deputies responded to a house on Front Street, where Rolland pulled out her daughter. The young child appeared to have scabbed over head injuries. The mother stated that her son, Blu Rolland, was not at the house.
After taking her to Forrest City Hospital, the staff discovered she had suffered severe burns.
According to the affidavit, Rolland’s mother told deputies that Blu was possibly dead inside the defendant’s house. Authorities then broke into the house and discovered the lad curled under the floorboards, covered in layers of garbage bags. On December 16, 2022, his sixth birthday, authorities discovered him.
Based on preliminary investigations, Arkansas State Police declared, “It’s suspected the youngster died from injuries sustained in the home. According to Rolland, her son passed away on Sept. 9, 2022, three months earlier.
The document states Blu supposedly “angered her boyfriend, Nathan Bridges, by biting his finger when Bridges stuck it in his mouth.” Bridges apparently drowned the toddler in the toilet as a punishment.
Rolland said she had gone into the bathroom and noticed her kid trying to breathe; nothing about his body seemed limp. She also told detectives that Bridges buried her dead kid under the floorboards.
Regarding her daughter’s injuries, Rolland reportedly attributed them to Bridges’s holding of her “head and upper torso under hot water in the bathtub.” Rolland reportedly punished her daughter with hot water due to her behavioral problems.
According to state police, the initial charges against Rolland and Bridges included capital murder, abuse of a corpse, manipulation of physical evidence, and endangering the welfare of a child.
In July, Bridges entered a plea of guilty to first-degree murder and first-degree battery, and the Arkansas Department of Corrections sentenced him to sixty years, while Rolland received a forty-year term.
