MOTHER
CHARGED IN BABY’S DROWNING DEATH
A month after a
baby drowned in a bathtub, the boy’s mother
is facing a charge of aggravated
manslaughter. The Volusia County Sheriff’s
Office’s investigation of the April 6 death
of 4-month-old Trenton Giachette inside his
family’s home near Ormond Beach resulted in
an arrest warrant being issued on Friday.
The mother, 30-year-old Christal Giachetti,
was picked up in New York early Friday
evening and is being held on $150,000 bond.
Friday’s arrest
came hours after a local judge issued a
warrant charging Giachetti with aggravated
manslaughter of a child, a 1st-degree
felony. While the investigation didn’t
conclude that the death was intentional,
Giachetti is accused of causing her baby’s
death through culpable negligence. Giachetti
gave numerous accounts of the tragedy during
interviews with Sheriff’s investigators, at
times insisting that she had no idea what
happened or how the baby ended up in the
tub. However, at one point during
questioning, she admitted putting the baby
in the tub and then forgetting he was there.
Trenton was rushed to Halifax Health Medical
Center in Daytona Beach, where he was
pronounced dead.
The subsequent
investigation by the Sheriff’s Office’s
Major Case Unit revealed that the baby’s
mother has a history of abusing prescription
pills and injecting herself with pain
medication meant to be swallowed. Deputies
who responded to the home on the day of
Trenton’s death said Giachetti appeared to
be high, her speech was slurred and she had
difficulty walking. Neighbors said they
noticed the same thing. When deputies went
into the home on Avenue H just south of
Ormond Beach, they found evidence of drug
use -- a hypodermic needle and spoons with a
white crystal substance on them and burn
marks on the bottom, indicating that the
spoons had been used to prepare drugs for
injecting. Giachetti told several different
versions of events to investigators. First,
she said Trenton was in bed with her
roommate when she left for a few minutes to
walk to her mother’s house two blocks away.
When she returned, Trenton was no longer in
the bed. Giachetti said she frantically went
looking for the baby, finding him in a tub
full of water up to about an inch from the
top. Later, she claimed that she woke her
roommate before leaving to her mother’s and
asked her to watch the baby while she was
gone. The roommate, however, said that
didn’t happen and she was awakened by
Giachetti after the mother found the baby in
the tub.
Friends and
family members who were interviewed by
investigators painted a picture of a mother
who struggled with drug abuse and parenting.
According to one of Giachetti’s cousins,
Giachetti remarked about three weeks before
Trenton’s death that she sometimes felt like
putting the baby in the tub, turning on the
water and leaving. Another cousin said
Giachetti had told her that she couldn’t
handle the baby and hated him. Giachetti
acknowledged suffering from postpartum
depression and said she tried to get help so
she wouldn’t hurt her baby. The cousins said
they would occasionally watch Trenton to
give Giachetti a break.
Aware that
Giachetti had gone to New York to visit
family, Sheriff’s investigators contacted
New York authorities Friday afternoon after
obtaining the warrant. Acting on information
from the Sheriff’s Office, New York State
Police picked up Giachetti at about 6 p.m.
at a relative’s house in Guilford. She will
be held at the Chenango County Correctional
Facility in Norwich, N.Y. pending her
extradition back to Florida.
Update -
May 18, 20009
Christal
Giachetti has been extradited from New
York and brought back to Volusia County,
where she was booked into the Volusia
County Branch Jail in Daytona Beach
Monday afternoon on a warrant charging
her with aggravated manslaughter of a
child. Giachetti is being held on
$150,000 bond.
