Death at a Very Early Age

摘要

Though still in diapers, 3-year-old Damion Stiffler knew enough to wriggle free when his older sister and a friend pushed his face down into a muddy puddle in the yard of their grandmother's house. But then his sister, who was only 6 herself, and the friend, a year younger, tried another approach. As investigators say the girls told them in Blythe, Calif, last week, one of the girls ran back to the house and came out with a pillow. They put the pillow over Damion's face. Then while one girl straddled the boy, the other sat on the pillow until he stopped struggling. A few minutes later, the boy's father, Gerald Stiffler, 33, arrived and sent his 12-year-old daughter to look for Damion. She found him in the mud, with the pillow still covering his face, and ran with him back into the house. Damion was dead before he reached the hospital, a little after 11 o'clock on a hot Sunday morning.