Mother’s Boyfriend Convicted in Baby’s Death

Feb. 21, 2022 – A Whitehaven man who reported that he discovered his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son face down in a bathtub in an apparent drowning has been convicted of causing the boy’s death from a beating, said Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich.

A Criminal Court jury found Marterrius Hite, 29, guilty of murder in the perpetration of aggravated child abuse, murder in the perpetration of aggravated child neglect, and on additional felony counts of aggravated child abuse and aggravated child neglect.

Judge Lee Coffee sentenced Hite to life in prison on the murder convictions, and will sentence him on the other convictions on March 31.

According to trial testimony, Hite called first responders on July 13, 2015, to a Whitehaven apartment and reported he found Deandre Davis floating in an upstairs bathtub and not breathing. The boy was taken to Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center where he died a short time later.

Police and medical personnel noticed cuts and bruising on the baby’s body, and Hite conceded that he had grabbed the baby by the neck and “popped him several times with a belt on his stomach and legs” before he found him in the bathtub.

A belt the defendant was wearing had a pattern of studs on it that matched multiple injuries of the boy’s back and legs.

The medical examiner later reported finding head trauma, brain hemorrhaging, numerous internal injuries in the abdomen, and scars and wounds in various stages of healing on the boy’s torso, legs and right arm.

A doctor for the defense told the jury the boy died from cancer.

The jury returned its verdict on Friday night. The case took years to bring to trial primarily because of extensive medical reports gathered and shared by both sides, and then additional delays were brought on by Covid restrictions that have limited trials in the past two years.

The case was handled by Chief Prosecutor Eric Christensen and Asst. Dist. Atty. Dru Carpenter of the District Attorney’s Special Victims Unit (SVU) which prosecutes cases that include rape, child sexual abuse, severe physical abuse of children, elder abuse, and vulnerable adult abuse.

The SVU was created as an expansion of the multi-agency Child Protection Investigative Team (CPIT.)