Foster mom arraigned in girl’s death

By Ed Runyan

WARREN — A Champion woman who was serving as foster mother for 20-month-old Tiffany Sue Banks when the girl was found unconscious last April has pleaded innocent to murder and felonious assault.

Bonnie Pattinson, 31, of 663 Center St. West in Champion Township and 70 Broad Street in Newton Falls, was arrested Friday after a Trumbull County grand jury handed up a secret indictment.

She was brought to the Trumbull County Courthouse, where she was arraigned on the charges late Friday. She is in Trumbull County jail in lieu of $1 million bond.

The indictment says Pattinson killed the girl as a result of committing felonious assault.

If convicted of murder, she could get 15 years to life in prison. The felonious assault carries a penalty of up to eight years in prison.

Champion police said Pattinson told them the girl had taken a nap for about 10 to 20 minutes, and when Pattinson checked on her, Tiffany was not breathing.

Pattinson took the girl to the other side of the duplex where she lived, and a neighbor called 911.

When a Champion police officer arrived, he and the duplex neighbor tried CPR, rescue breathing and used a mobile defibrillator from the cruiser to try to revive the girl, but their efforts were unsuccessful.

In late July, Dr. Humphrney Germaniuk, Trumbull County coroner, ruled Tiffany’s death was a homicide and said the cause was asphyxia (lack of oxygen) associated with multiple blunt-force injuries.

A nurse at the hospital and an EMS worker both said the girl had marks on her body that had not come from the medical attention she had received, Champion police said.

Pattinson and her husband, William, were serving as foster parents for Tiffany, who had been taken from her birth mother, Felicia Banks of Warren, at the hospital within one day of her birth.

Banks’ family said Trumbull County Children Services took custody of Banks’ first child a couple years before Tiffany was born. Felicia Banks has a third child who lives with the child’s father’s family.

Dr. Germaniuk said it took several months to rule on the girl’s cause of death because of the battery of tests that were done on her body.