Two decades later, father goes back to jail for same crime

Jailed at 19 for shaking baby, Fla. father guilty again when she dies from it 2 decades later

MITCH STACY

Associated Press Writer

1:44 p.m. EDT, April 17, 2010


NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. (AP) — Soon after Christina Welch turned 18 in the spring of 2005, her biological parents asked permission to pay her a visit. Mike and Tina Wells broke down when the bed covers were pulled back and they saw the state of the girl: so severely brain damaged as a baby that she never learned to walk, talk or sit up by herself.

Maureen Welch, the woman who had adopted her, walked into the kitchen to leave the three of them alone, thinking to herself that it was good the couple finally got to see what Mike Wells had done to his infant daughter.

"I didn't know I hurt her that bad," he said to Welch when he came into the kitchen. He apologized and told Welch she was a guardian angel sent by God to take care of their Christina.

Mike Wells was 19 when he shook his 2-month-old daughter and covered her mouth to stop her from crying. He and Tina Wells were convicted of aggravated child abuse in 1989, and each served less than a year in prison.
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Jailed at 19 for shaking baby