Hansson
MONTICELLO – A 23-year-old Fulton, New York woman was sentenced
in Sullivan County Court on Wednesday to 22 years in state prison and
five years of post-release supervision for the assault on her three-year-old
son.
Saundra Hansson was found guilty on October 1, 2015.
The jury convicted her of two counts of assault and criminal obstruction
of breathing or blood circulation as a misdemeanor.
Sullivan County District Attorney James Farrell said the evidence at trial
established that Hansson, who was visiting in Sullivan from June 15 and
18, 2014, established a three-year-old child, who sustained life-threatening
injuries including severe abdominal injuries, a broken pelvis in three
locations, a broken neck, five broken ribs, a broken clavicle, a broken
arm, broken fingers and bones in both hands and extensive bruises, contusions
and abrasions all about the child’s head and body.
The child’s condition was noticed on June 18, 2014 by a strange
at the Short Line bus terminal, who called Monticello Police. That led
to the criminal investigation by several state and local agencies. Farrell
credited the stranger, who he called “a guardian angel,” with
saving the child’s life by reporting his condition.
The injuries to the child were such that one doctor who testified at trial,
a veteran pediatric emergency room doctor, broke down on the witness stand
after describing the nature of the injuries she witnessed on the child.
Testimony also established that without medical intervention, the child
would have died within hours.
Hansson admitted the brutal assault in an interview with State Police
and the child identified her as the perpetrator of the abuse when being
treated at Catskill Regional Medical Center to the attending pediatric
trauma physician.
Farrell, who tried the case, said it was “one of the most disturbing
and upsetting cases I have had in my 20 years as a prosecutor and had
this stranger in the bus station not called the police, we certainly would
have been dealing with a homicide.”
