La Plata, MD – Romechia Marie Simms, the 26-year-old woman whose 3-year-old son died in a swing set at Wills Park in La Plata in 2015, may be allowed to go to outpatient treatment after Charles County Deputy Public Defender Edie Cimino told Circuit Court Judge H. James West Wednesday, March 29 that the defendant has progressed since entering into treatment following her plea agreement last year.
“She has done very well,” Cimino told the court. “She hasn’t missed taking her medication once. We have reached out to her therapist and her clinical team and she does not present a danger to herself.
“She has made a lot of progress,” she added, asking the court to consider allowing Simms to have her therapy “stepped down” to outpatient treatment.
“She would be seeing the same therapist,” Cimino noted. “She is also working part-time.”
Charles County Assistant States Attorney Tiffany Campbell said that while the state had no objection to the request, the state needed to have Simms’ prior status update file provided to them.
“We would ask that the court have a status hearing in 90 days,” Campbell requested, and West set a date of June 26 for that hearing.
Simms took her 3-year-old son to Wills Park prior to May 22, 2015, and Charles County Sheriff’s Office investigators uncovered a video showing her actions, according to Charles County States Attorney Tony Covington.
Covington told the court last year that Simms put her son in a bucket swing, where he remained for 40 hours. Two days later, a neighbor saw the child and called police, concerned for the child’s welfare. When police arrived, they determined the child had been deceased for eight to 10 hours.
The prosecutor also said police found evidence that Simms had smoked K-2, a marijuana substitute which he compared on some level to PCP, before the baby’s death.
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com