A Florida woman has been accused of instructing a 10-year-old child through the online gaming platform Roblox to kill a two-month-old baby by dropping it on a solid tile floor.
Tara Sykes, 36, from Perdido Key, allegedly connected with the 10-year-old via Roblox’s social media function and then persuaded them to carry out the violence, the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Monday.
The suspect also allegedly made a slew of other demands to the child including to drown the baby in the bath and scold the infant with boiling water, deputies said.
She also told the 10-year-old to use a knife to slit the throats of the adults they were temporarily living with while they slept, authorities allege. Then, she allegedly told the child to douse the guardians’ bedding with flammable aerosol spray and set their corpses on fire.
The 10-year-old was “unable to carry out instructions” on the adults, the sheriff’s office said – but did allegedly harm the infant.
