Iowa maniac who gunned down 6 relatives ran daycare practice where baby died in his care: court records

An Iowa maniac who gunned down six family members before shooting himself dead previously ran a daycare practice where a baby died in his care, according to court documents.Ryan Willis McFarland operated the Little People Daycare & Preschool alongside his wife, Lesa McFarland, one of his victims in Monday’s spree, from their Muscatine home.Lesa McFarland had grown frustrated about the lack of childcare options in the early 2000s for her kids from a past marriage before they launched the service, according to a Quad-City Times newspaper report cited by the Daily Mail.  But McFarland, who was already a serial offender, was blamed for the death of eight-month-old baby Charles Negus, who was unresponsive after being found inside a crib with a head on his pillow, RadioIowa reported The baby died in the hospital and McFarland, who had aspirations of becoming a teacher, was charged in 2011 with a felony of child endangerment resulting in death and neglect.But pathologists struggled to determine if the baby died from asphyxia or sudden unexplained infant death, according to a Muscatine Journal report at the time.

McFarland pleaded guilty and the child endangerment felony was reduced to a misdemeanor as part of his plea deal, meaning he avoided a maximum sentence of 50 years imprisonment.The neglect charge was dropped.“In the end, we chose the certain outcome of a negotiated plea over the uncertainty outcome of a jury trial,” Alan Ostergren, the Muscatine County Attorney at the time, said.McFarland’s childcare license was revoked – and it emerged that he had never declared his past offenses on his application record.McFarland was convicted of armed robbery in Illinois in 1994 and was sentenced to seven years in prison, WQAD reported.In 1997, he also pled guilty to a theft charge and was slapped with an eight-year sentence. McFarland was also convicted of fraud in 2019 after being busted for tinkering with the odometers of cars before selling them.He tried...