When you adopt a child, you take over all parental rights, which are relinquished by the child’s birth parents. Adopting a child gives you all of the same rights as the child’s birth parents, and it can occur at any point during a child’s life, including just after birth or well into a child’s teen years. Both foster parents and guardians can adopt children already in their care or children who they aren’t fostering or acting as guardians of. Unfortunately, this was not the case with Jacob and Laura.
The adoptive parents of 5-year-old Landen were arrested and charged with t0rture and beating death the boy. After the boy’s death, the adoptive parents reportedly sought to create Fundraiser to pay for their legal fees. The couple’s arrest follows them posting a fundraiser purporting to pay for their adoptive son’s funeral expenses only to be steered towards their legal fees. The boy died a week after he was taken to a hospital unconscious. The 34-year-old adoptive mother accused of killing him and her husband Jacob are alleged to have created a GoFundMe page for their son (since taken down) two days after he was admitted to the hospital.
Wrote Laura in part: ‘Tragedy struck our family when our precious baby boy went unresponsive. I rushed him to the ER and they intubated him and he’s been unresponsive ever since. the outcome is not looking good.’ A forensic exam revealed that Landen had prior injuries and suffered abuse before his death. As a result, his adoptive mother and her husband were being investigated for child abuse leading up to his death, WPXI reported. During questioning, the boy’s adoptive parents who had five other children, said Landen had been ‘wobbly from COVID a month prior.’
Hospital staff claimed Laura showed no urgency when they arrived, despite the boy suffering 3 brain bleeds, with the couple waiting an entire day to get him medical attention. Realizing that they were facing potential legal headwinds the couple set up a GoFundMe initially asking for help with legal fees and then funeral costs. The fundraiser, which has since been removed, raised $5,350 with Laura begging for sympathy before her adopted son died. Jacob has since been charged with homicide, child endangerment and aggravated assault. Laura faces the same charges as her husband, with an additional count of first-degree murder. The couple’s five children were removed from their parents care, with authorities saying they were safe, while declining to say whether all efforts and measures had been put in place that may have preempted the parents from allowing them to adopt.
