A former Georgia beauty pageant winner is being charged with killing an 18-month-old boy. The charges include disturbing details about what the police think happened.
There were several charges brought against 18-year-old Trinity Poague in January in connection with the death of Jaxton Drew. These included murder and battery. The child’s legal name is Romeo Angeles, but his father told WLBT at the hospital that the kid was named “Jaxton Drew Williams.” The child is called Jaxton Dru, Jaxton Drew, or Jaxton Williams in different news stories and on a GoFundMe page that was created in his name after he was killed.
The Georgia Southwestern State University Police Department asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) to help them look into Jaxton’s death after the boy was taken to a hospital in Americus, Ga., the GBI said in a statement at the time. The next day, Jaxton died at the hospital. The author Poague had gone to the school.
Sumter County police said in an indictment released last month that Poague’s alleged abuse left the boy with “serious disfigurement to his liver,” a “useless” brain, and major injuries to his head and body.
Documents made public by WDHN and WALB say Poague was charged with one count of murder with intent, two counts of criminal murder, two counts of aggravated battery, and one count of cruelty to children.
A story from WRDW at the time said that witnesses said Poague was seeing Jaxton’s father at the time of the murder.
WRDW spoke to Lilly Waterman, a student at the school, who said that everyone in Poague’s college dorm heard a kid crying for a long time on the day of Jaxton’s death. The crying stopped all of a sudden.
Man 2: “And no one knew what happened.”
WDHN says Poague was freed in February on a $75,000 bail. In March, the Early County News said that she had lost her position as “Miss Donalsonville.”
The outlet said that she was allowed to leave the Americus area after she got out of jail, but she had to wear an ankle monitor the whole time she was not in jail.
It wasn’t clear right away if she had made a plea or hired a lawyer to speak for her.
