Mother mourns loss of infant; cousin charged child's death

"He was a cute, even-tone baby," McLaurin said of her late son. "He was very quiet.

"All he ever really wanted to do was just play."

Aniel is dead, McLaurin is in mourning, and her emotions are complicated by the fact that law enforcement believes Vanburen is to blame.

"[The autopsy] said that my son had optic nerve damage and bleeding on his brain, and he had a few broken ribs," McLaurin said.

That document said that Aniel's cause of death was "blunt force injury of head and torso" adding "the documented injuries ... are highly suspicious  ... and would be more than expected from a fall from climbing over the playpen's wall onto carpeted floor."

McLaurin said she let Vanburen stay in her mobile home off Beargrass Street in January because she had nowhere to go.

On Jan. 5, McLaurin was running late for work and asked Vanburen if she would watch her 1-year-old son and 6-year-old son.

When McLaurin returned from work the next day, Aniel was unresponsive. She called for medical help.

"I think they took my son, took him to the ambulance over here, and I kept [telling] them, 'I want to see my baby. I want to see my baby,'" McLaurin said. "The lady told me they were going to take me to the hospital with them, but he was already dead."

McLaurin has questions for Vanburen.

"Why would she kill an innocent baby?" McLaurin said. "I mean he couldn't have done [anything] that bad to be murdered.

"No child could anything that bad to be murdered. Why would you want to kill a child?"

Vanburen was taken into custody without incident.

Authorities are holding Vanburen without bond at the Cumberland County Detention Center.