A 29-year-old Boulder woman jailed in the strangulation killing of her 2-month-old son has been charged formally with two counts of first-degree murder, Boulder court officials confirmed Thursday morning.
A preliminary hearing in the case against Anna Englund in Boulder District Court has been set for Sept. 8.
On Thursday, Englund was in jail, a court official said, declining to provide information on whether she has received mental health treatment.
Englund was suffering from postpartum mental health problems for which she had been hospitalized and received medications, and she told police sleep deprivation had “changed her ability to function,” according to an arrest affidavit.
Englund told police she took her son away from their home at 902 Portland Place in Boulder while the baby’s father was in the bathroom on Saturday and that she strangled the baby “because I didn’t want him to suffer in life like I have,” the affidavit says. She told police “she was worried about all of the things that could happen” to him “because the world was ‘crazy’.”
The husband had called the police, notifying them he was worried due to Englund’s mental problems, and asking for police help. On Saturday afternoon, police went to the home and the father said Englund had taken their baby away in her car. Police tried to find Englund, sending an alert to other police agencies. They saw Englund’s car around 10:20 pm in Boulder as she went to the Boulder Community Hospital and contacted the police, according to the affidavit.
Police then rushed the infant into the emergency room, where he was pronounced dead at 10:48 p.m., and they arrested Englund for investigation of murder and child abuse resulting in death.
She told police she’d taken the infant in the car and parked in front of a house where she strangled the boy and then drove to a place she believed to be in Denver where she tried to kill herself by looking for a building she could jump off and trying to hang herself, the affidavit says. At the time of her arrest, it says, police saw cuts on the side of her face that she said were the result of an attempt to kill herself.
Advocates at Postpartum Support International, a Portland, Oregon-based group pushing for better health care, were monitoring the case.
“If a health care provider assesses that a postpartum patient is dealing with depression and anxiety. … health care providers need to spend enough time with the patient, and her family, to really assess whether there is a risk of harm,” PSI executive director Wendy Davis said.
“If they hear of a risk of harm, they need to keep that person in their care,” Davis said. “A person who is developing irrational symptoms of postpartum psychosis needs to be in medical care. This is a medical emergency.”
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