BOSTON — The 8-month-old boy who was critically injured Tuesday night at his home in Duxbury has died at a Boston hospital, the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office said. His siblings, 5-year-old Cora and 3-year-old Dawson, also died.
“(Friday), at approximately 12:30 p.m., the state office of the Chief Medical Examiner contacted the Massachusetts State Police assigned to our office to report that at 11:18 a.m., the third Clancy child was pronounced dead at Children’s Hospital in Boston,” District Attorney spokeswoman Beth Stone said in a statement.
Police responded to an 911 call on Tuesday evening reporting a woman was attempting suicide on Summer Street in Duxbury. When officers arrived, they found a woman seriously injured after jumping from her second-story window, and two of her children strangled inside. Callan Clancy, the 8-month-old boy, was taken to hospital with serious injuries.
Lindsay Clancy, 32, is already facing two counts of murder in the deaths of Cora and Dawson Clancy, 3, as well as three counts each of strangulation and assault and battery with a deadly weapon.
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Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead Tuesday at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Plymouth. District Attorney Timothy Cruz said the medical examiner’s office will be responsible for determining the exact means and causes of their deaths, but that it appears they were strangled.
Cruz said “no one is here to speculate” on exactly what happened or why Lindsay Clancy killed her own children. Duxbury police chief Michael Carbone would not say whether police were aware of the Clancy family or whether the house had been called before.
“Our hearts and condolences go out to the Clancy family,” Cruz said. “I can’t begin to fathom the depths of the pain that could be going on.”
DA: Children strangled in Duxbury home, mother charged with murder
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The incident has sparked conversations about postpartum depression and psychosis as the “unthinkable tragedy” has people across the region searching for answers.
Cases of women who killed their children were often accompanied by postpartum depression or psychosis, the latter being a condition that can seriously alter a person’s mental state after giving birth. If left untreated, it can pose a serious threat to both the mother and her child.
Nancy Byatt, a perinatal psychiatrist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who is an expert on maternal depression, said postpartum psychosis “can hijack the brain.”
Reach Mary Whitfill at [email protected]
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This article originally appeared in The Patriot Ledger: 8-month-old Callan Clancy dies of injuries in Duxbury tragedy
