By: Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — A Yale mother “has claimed she harmed her infant son at the direction of God because the child was a weapon of the devil,” District Attorney Laura Austin Thomas said in asking that a judge order her to undergo a mental examination by a representative of the Oklahoma Forensic Center.
Victoria Shane Matheson-Lewis, 26, who was arrested at her rural Yale residence on Aug. 15, remains in the Payne County Jail on $200,000 bail pending an Oct. 7 court appearance at which a ruling could be made on her competency to face criminal charges that were filed last week.
“Defendant’s behavior toward and answers to questions propounded by representatives of the Payne County Sheriff’s Office have suggested she may be out of touch with reality and delusional in her thinking,” the DA said in an application for a determination of her competency ordered by Special District Judge Michael Kulling in August.
In his order, the judge said that the Yale mother “presents a potential threat to the safety of herself or others and should be detained in a secure facility until the completion of said competency examination and hearing.”
The Yale mother was charged on Sept. 24 with stabbing her 11-day-old baby boy in the stomach and stabbing her husband in the chest on Aug. 15. If found mentally able to face charges of child abuse and domestic assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, after a former conviction of robbery with a weapon in Pawnee County in 2013, the Yale mother could be given a prison term of 12 years to life on conviction.
While a relative called 911 at 8:48 p.m. on Aug. 15, family members took the infant to the Yale Fire Department; when Cushing ambulance staff arrived, the baby was transported to Stillwater Medical Center and then airlifted to the OU Children’s Hospital for surgery, Sheriff Kevin Woodward said.
The baby’s maternal grandmother said, “Victoria had been recently diagnosed with postpartum depression,” Sheriff’s Deputy David Sloan wrote in an affidavit.
The baby’s father said he had just gotten to the residence when he heard his wife’s mother say “Vicki (Victoria) had the baby,” the affidavit said.
The baby’s father said he walked around the back of a car and saw his wife squatting while the infant was on the ground, the affidavit said. The baby’s father said he saw something in his wife’s hand, but could not tell what it was, the affidavit said.
The baby’s father said after he shoved his wife away from the infant, she stabbed him in the chest, the affidavit said. The baby’s father said he took the knife from his wife, threw it, subdued his wife and told her mother to take the infant to the hospital, the affidavit said.
When the deputy went in the house where the baby’s mother was sitting in a chair, “I observed dried blood on Victoria’s hands, left leg and around her nose and mouth,” he wrote in his affidavit. “When Victoria looked at me, it appeared as if she was looking through me,” the deputy wrote in his affidavit.
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