The lawyer for a Taos woman accused of shaking an infant in her care in August waived her arraignment Tuesday on a charge of felony child abuse.
The attorney, Shane Farrow, appeared for his client, Shelley Richter, 40, before Cole County Associate Circuit Judge Tom Sodergren, who scheduled her preliminary hearing in the case for Oct. 18.
Prosecutors accuse Richter of striking the victim's head, then shaking it, causing retinal hemorrhages and a subdural hematoma -- a pocket of blood outside a blood vessel that generally is collected within tissue or a muscle.
Richter claimed as she was picking up the then-7-month-old boy, she took a step backward and tripped over a toddler that she had not seen behind her. As she fell to the ground, Richter told investigators, she must have let the child go and he fell to the ground.