A 29-year-old Boulder woman jailed in the killing of her 2-month-old son had postpartum mental health problems, according to an arrest affidavit.
Boulder authorities have arrested and jailed Anna Englund for investigation of first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death.
Englund told a Boulder police officer that she took her son a couple of blocks away from their home at 902 Portland Place on Saturday while the baby’s father was in the bathroom and strangled him “because I didn’t want him to suffer in life like I have,” the affidavit stated. She told the officer “she was worried about all of the things that could happen” to her baby “because the world was ‘crazy’.”
She stopped in front of a house around noon and believed no one saw her and “‘strangled’ with her hands” while the infant was in her lap, it said. She then drove to a place she believed to be in Denver looking unsuccessfully for a building she could jump off of to kill herself and went to a Burger King for a hamburger before returning to Boulder, it said.
The infant’s father on Saturday called the police requesting a welfare check due to Englund’s post-partum mental issues, saying she had taken their son in her car. Police went to the home around 4:46 p.m., according to the affidavit.
Police searched for Englund for several hours.
According to the arrest affidavit, Englund told the police officer she initially tried to strangle her baby by putting six pieces of duct tape over his eyes, nose, and mouth and placing a rope around his neck. She had placed these items in her car a day earlier because she planned to use them to kill herself, the affidavit said. “She thought it would be a less painful way to strangle him, but she could tell quickly that he was in pain, because he was breathing hard, so she stopped, removed the rope and the tape. She then strangled him with her hands. While she said she elected to kill (the infant) so he did not suffer, she confirmed that he suffered as she strangled him, and it took several minutes for him to stop moving.”
After buying the burger, she looked for a tree to try to hang herself “but was unable to get the rope tight enough to stop her breathing” and drove back to Boulder, according to the affidavit. She placed her backpack at their residence, saying she wanted her partner, the baby’s father, to have her belongings “before she went to prison,” then drove to the Boulder Community Hospital, where she contacted police, according to the police officer’s account in the affidavit.
“She never showed emotion while we spoke and noted that she was unsure why she was ‘stoic’ as she told me what happened. She repeatedly told me she could not sleep, and it had changed her ability to function.” Her husband had locked her in a room “because he was worried she would do something to them,” and she said she’d been hospitalized twice due to suicidal ideation. “She had made appointments to see a therapist but did not go to the appointments because of sleep deprivation,” the affidavit said.
She’d been prescribed a medication while she was in the hospital “but she only took it once and she felt more suicidal……she refused to take it again,” the affidavit said.
Police arrested Englund at the Boulder Community Hospital at 10:29 p.m. Saturday, police records show, and took the infant boy “in critical condition” to the hospital emergency room where he was pronounced dead at 10:48 p.m.
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