INDIANAPOLIS — An Indianapolis mother is speaking out in disbelief after a judge decided to release the man accused of shaking her baby to death.
This is the second time the defendant, Brandon Herring, was granted permission to go home with a GPS monitor.
“I just... I don't understand,” said the baby's mother, Savannah Thompson.
Herring was released just before 1 p.m. Friday after Judge Shatrese Flowers granted him pretrial release and ordered him to be under GPS monitoring. Just over three months ago, police say Herring admitted to shaking his 4-month-old son, Jaxson, right before his death.
Thompson still smiles just saying her son's name.
"Jaxson was a ball of joy,” she said. “I want to be the one posting pictures of him wrapped in Christmas lights by the tree and holding him and him opening his presents and stuff, you know, just stuff like that. And I won't get to experience that. But he does after everything he did."
According to court documents, Herring first denied shaking Jaxson when police questioned him back in August. Later, he admitted he shook the baby to get him to stop crying.
Court documents say Herring told police he shook the child for 7 to 10 seconds and yelled, “Jax, Jax, come on, calm down.”
He later told police he put the boy down, “because I realized I was doing something wrong.”
The hospital told police the baby was shaken so badly that he had: "multiple brain bleeds" and "retinal hemorrhaging" consistent with shaken baby syndrome.
On Thursday, the judge granted Herring pretrial release and to go under GPS monitoring, even though he admitted to violating the conditions of his release granted back in September.
Court documents show Herring may have texted Thompson, "I'm sorry," despite a no contact order. They go on to say before he could get picked up, Herring removed his electronic monitoring bracelet. He was eventually found and arrested again in October, 10 days after the "strap tamper alert" on the device went off.
Thompson is frustrated that the judge let him out again ahead of the holidays.
“They cut it off the first time,” she said. “Proving that they were a flight risk, proving that they could not be trusted. And you look at them and give them another chance. I just, I don't understand."
Herring was supposed to go to trial in December, but his legal team was granted a continuance. He's now scheduled to go to trial in February.
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