An Ohio Woman Who Ran a Daycare Out of Her Reynoldsburg Home Was Sentenced to Life in Prison for the Murder of a 5-Month-Old Twin Boy in Her Care

A police affidavit in the case of Tammra Straughter listed injuries that no parent should ever have to read about their baby: brain swelling and bleeding, fractures on both sides of the jaw, bleeding in the eyes and bruising across the body. The child was Kashan Crawford, a 5-month-old twin who had been dropped off at Straughter’s in-home daycare in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, on the morning of Oct. 9, 2023. On Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026, nearly three years after his death, a Franklin County court sentenced Straughter to life in prison.

Straughter was convicted in August of murder and child endangerment. She will be eligible for parole after 15 years.

A routine drop-off at a home daycare in Reynoldsburg

Kashan’s mother, Stacia Crawford, brought both of her twin boys, Kashan and Kiyan, to Straughter’s home that day. She later told 10TV that Kashan was healthy and in a good mood when she left him. She knew Straughter through the local high school, where Straughter’s own child was a student.

Later that day, police called to say Kashan had briefly stopped breathing and was with medics. Responders who arrived at the home found him breathing, and at first he seemed to be all right. Crawford said she could tell something was wrong because he did not seem fully awake, and her pediatrician advised her to take him to Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

According to WHIO, which cited court documents, Kashan was first taken to an urgent care, then placed in an ambulance headed for Nationwide Children’s. The ambulance had to divert to Mount Carmel East after he went into cardiac arrest for roughly 45 minutes. Medical staff at Nationwide Children’s later told police the infant had suffered physical abuse consistent with shaken baby syndrome. He died days later.

Straughter gave police a different account. She said Kashan was smiling and in perfect health when he arrived, then became fussy. She told investigators she laid him on his back on the floor while she cared for another child and returned to find him spitting up and appearing to choke. She said she tried to clear his airway, patted his back, gave rescue breaths and called 911.

A Franklin County grand jury indicted Straughter, then 51, on charges of murder and endangering children, and she pleaded not guilty. At her first court appearance, prosecutor Scott Sugarman said, according to The Columbus Dispatch, the deputy coroner found that Kashan’s brain was among the most swollen he had seen, which strongly suggested abusive head trauma from violent shaking. A detective also recovered deleted text messages in which Straughter expressed frustration with the twins’ fussiness.

Life in prison, with parole possible after 15 years

At trial, Straughter’s attorneys argued that Kashan had gotten sick and that she had tried to help him. In August, she was found guilty of murder and child endangerment.

The life sentence handed down on Oct. 7 is the maximum the law allowed, ABC6 reported. Straughter received credit for 54 days already served and has 30 days to file an appeal.

Both of Kashan’s parents spoke in court. His father, Jontue Chatman, talked about the trust the family had placed in Straughter and was visibly emotional. His mother told the court she had carried rage and heartbreak since her son’s death, and said she did not want to spend most of her time at the podium talking about the woman who caused it. In earlier interviews, she said she wished she had noticed something sooner.

What parents can check before choosing in-home child care

The injury behind Kashan’s death has a name doctors know well. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls abusive head trauma, which includes shaken baby syndrome, a leading cause of child abuse deaths in children under 5, accounting for about one-third of all child maltreatment deaths in the United States. Babies under 1 year old face the greatest risk, and the CDC says the abuse often happens when a caregiver becomes angry or frustrated by crying. Up to one in four infants with abusive head trauma dies, and nearly all survivors have lasting effects.

The CDC’s message for anyone caring for a baby is direct: shaking, throwing or hitting a baby is never the right response to crying. The agency advises caregivers who feel overwhelmed to put the baby safely in a crib, step away to calm down and check back every five to 10 minutes.

For parents already stretched by a child care search that can take 39 hours, the practical steps start before the first drop-off. In Ohio, families can look up a provider on the state’s Ohio Child Care Search, which shows whether a center or family child care home is licensed or registered, along with inspection results and quality ratings. Other states keep similar databases.

The nonprofit Child Care Aware of America publishes a checklist for touring a family child care home. It suggests asking whether every caregiver has passed a comprehensive background check, whether they have been trained to prevent and recognize child abuse, and whether their infant CPR certification is current. Its best-practice guidance says a single caregiver should have no more than two children under age 2 at once, and if two babies are in care, no other children should be enrolled. The checklist also suggests asking whether parents are welcome to drop in at any time.

Parents should also know how a provider handles injuries and reporting, an issue at the center of a mom’s lawsuit against a daycare that failed to report her child’s injury.

None of that can undo what happened to Kashan Crawford. His twin brother, Kiyan, was in the same home that day, and his parents waited nearly three years for the sentence handed down this month.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Ɱ – CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons