Pine Bluff: Battered Woman, Deceased Baby, Probable Cause Warrant Issued
Pine Bluff: Battered Woman, Deceased Baby, Probable Cause Warrant Issued
Baby buried in yard, mother still in ICU
The Pine Bluff Police Department Detective Division filed a probable cause affidavit Tuesday against Sylvester B. Brown.
In July, Pine Bluff was rocked by a crime involving an abused woman with severe injuries and her dead baby buried in a front yard.
The suspect has two offenses: Domestic Battery, First Degree, and Abuse of a Corpse.
Warning: The following content and court documents are extremely graphic.
Pine Bluff Police received a call about a beaten woman locked inside “an abandoned house, beaten, and afraid.”
The officers searched the residence on Spruce Street where they were dispatched. They could not find a woman.
They contacted the woman's mother and got another house on Spruce Street. The mother “mentioned that Sylvester Brown (a possible suspect) was seen walking away from the area prior to the police arriving.”
Another man — not Brown — arrived at the house. He said he had been to the house “multiple times.” He had seen the woman at the house. The man asked police “if he could enter the residence and try to locate her because the police had searched twice without success.”
The man entered the residence. He could be heard tearing down boards inside, according to court documents. He uncovered a boarded-up wall that led to a bathroom.
The man also removed window boards. He yelled to police that he had located the woman. She was alive.
The woman had “bruising on her face, back, stomach, head, and arms. She was lying on the floor in a puddle of blood.”
The woman was transported by ambulance to Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Pine Bluff. She was ultimately “airlifted to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) due to her extensive injuries to her face and was unable to give a statement.”
The woman and the man who discovered her received rape kits, and a subsequent DNA sample was taken from the man.
A detective received a tip on July 3 that the woman was previously pregnant and that Brown cut the baby out of the woman and buried it in the yard.
The same person who gave the tip to the detective “stated that the baby was reportedly stillborn prior to being cut out.”
The detective and Pine Bluff Police Crime Scene technicians returned to Spruce Street. They discovered “a section in the front yard that was freshly disturbed. That disturbed area was dug and searched, and a small baby was recovered.”
The Jefferson County Coroner sent the baby to the Arkansas State Crime Lab for further analysis.
“A BOLO was issued for Sylvester Brown. It was discovered he was an absconder from Probation/Parole and had a felony warrant. Following an extensive search, Sylvester Brown was located at an abandoned school (Oak Park Elementary) on July 8 2024,” according to court documents.
“Brown was read his Miranda Rights, which he acknowledged he understood, and admitted he struck [the victim] with a brick to her face,” the documents state.
That abuse happened approximately three days before police located her.
The woman was pregnant, Brown said, and she delivered the baby at the abandoned house a few days before.
Brown said the baby was deceased. He said the woman had a white man's baby.
“Mr. Brown said he was upset about her having a white man's baby and slapped her about four (4) times that day. He said he later argued with her again and that was when he struck her with the brick. Mr. Brown said he had nothing to do with the baby being buried in the front yard,” court documents state.
Brown said the woman buried the baby.
But during the police interview, Brown said the woman “was too weak to walk without assistance. He also said she cut the umbilical cord herself.”
Later, Brown said the man who found the woman in the house may have buried the baby. Brown also said only he [Brown] and the woman knew about the baby.
Brown admitted to “heavy drug use during that time frame.”
The woman remains in ICU at a Little Rock hospital.
I have no words…