Brittany Watts is finally speaking out after news broke over the charge she faces in connection to a miscarriage she suffered in her own home.
Watts spoke to WJW’s I-Team about how she felt after failing to deliver her baby and the subsequent felony charge she now faces as a result.
“I was distraught, heartbroken, empty — literally and figuratively, so to speak,” the 33-year-old told WJW.
Watts was admitted twice to the hospital during the third week of September before her miscarriage after experiencing severe cramping and bleeding, the outlet reported. However, after having to wait for hours in a hospital room during those visits, she left.
However, Traci Timiko, Watts’ lawyer, said her client was told that her fetus “was not viable and could not and would not survive.”
She miscarried that Friday. She was 22 weeks along in her pregnancy at the time. Afterward, she tried to flush the toilet, but it overflowed, so she used a bucket to clean up.
Timiko says Watts desperately tried to keep the pregnancy from her family. She didn’t even want them to know she suffered a miscarriage, so she went to a hair appointment she had scheduled for that day to keep up appearances.
However, moments after she arrived, her hairdresser grew concerned and called her mother. Then she was taken to the hospital.
Watts believed she would only be evaluated and treated at most during that visit. She never foresaw the hospital calling the police.
WJW obtained a copy of a nurse’s 911 call:
“This is the hospital, labor and delivery, at St. Joe’s and I need to speak to an officer about a case that I have here. She was sent here with bleeding on Tuesday and that night she left, against medical advice. She came back in on Wednesday still bleeding and said, ‘Maybe I do need to be seen.’ So we readmitted her and we were talking her through everything and she disappeared.”
The nurse told the dispatcher that Watts told hospital staff that she put the fetus in the bucket and left the bucket outside the home. When police went to Watts’ house, they discovered the fetus was still in the toilet, removed the toilet, and seized it as evidence.
It wasn’t until some weeks after that Watts was charged with abuse of a corpse.
“It’s a lot of pain, it’s a lot of emotion, and she was terrified,“ Timko said of her client. “There were so many things going on that she was trying to handle at one time.”
Watts said she felt a range of emotions wash over her when she learned a grand jury decided to charge her.
“When I was arrested I felt anger, scared, betrayed, confused, nervous,” Watts told WJW in a statement. “Every negative emotion you could conjure up in the English language, I felt it.”
During Watts’ preliminary hearing, a forensic pathologist testified that no injuries were found on the fetus and that the fetus died before passing through the birth canal.
Timiko believes her client will be cleared of the charge since no law in Ohio dictates a woman must bury or cremate her miscarriage remains.
Warren Police Chief Eric Merkel sent a brief statement to WJW about how police carried out their investigation.
“The Warren Police Department received a call from the hospital regarding this incident. We investigated it and then consulted with prosecutors in the Warren Municipal Court. They allowed the charge to be filed. The Prosecutor’s Office makes the final determination whether or not charges are filed. A preliminary hearing was held on this case and the Judge determined there was probable cause to send this case to the Trumbull County Grand Jury for review.”
Two city councilmen are now siding with Watts in the matter and want the police and city prosecutor’s office to handle the case differently.
“It’s terrible, absolutely terrible,” Warren councilman Ken MacPherson told WJW. “If this is your family member, would you want this kind of tragedy to end with a prosecutorial felony? Come on. This is wrong.”
“What happened was a natural occurrence,” councilman Helen Rucker said. “The only one that can be accountable for that is the creator, so if you are not going to charge God, don’t charge her.”
