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Woman Pleads No Contest to Letting Infant Freeze to Death

Police say it was January yet the bedroom windows were wide open

By Molly Priddy

GREAT FALLS — A Montana woman accused of allowing her infant daughter to freeze to death in an apartment has pleaded no contest to felony criminal endangerment.

The Great Falls Tribune reported Wednesday that 24-year-old Misty Marie Cutburth struck a plea deal in May that recommends a suspended sentence for the January 2016 death of her 8-month-old daughter, Kendall. The sentence is contingent on Cutburth being accepted into drug treatment court.

Police were called to Cutburth’s Great Falls apartment on a report of an unresponsive baby and found Kendall in the bathroom. The nighttime temperature that week was about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degree Celsius), and windows to the bedrooms had been left wide open.

When police found her, the baby’s temperature did not register on a thermometer.

Investigators also found foil in the apartment that later tested positive for methamphetamine.