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California

CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / RIVERSIDE

By Corina Knoll
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A 38-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of killing her 17-month-old son, authorities said Tuesday.

The toddler was found dead about 11 p.m. Monday in his family’s home in the 5600 block of Via Terreno with blunt-force trauma to his head and a puncture wound to his stomach, said Sgt. Mark Rossi of the Riverside Police Department.

“In the preliminary investigation, we believe that an object was used,” Rossi said. The boy’s stay-at-home mother, Lori Burchett, was arrested after police arrived. She was being held at the Robert Presley Detention Center in downtown Riverside. Police said they were called to the scene by someone in the house.

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Burchett’s two other boys, ages 3 and 15, were home at the time, Rossi said. They were returned to the care of their father, who was not home when the toddler was killed, he said.

Burchett has no previous record of abuse, and the case remains under investigation.

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Corina Knoll

Corina Knoll is a former reporter for the Metro section of the Los Angeles Times. She was on the team that investigated corruption in Bell — which led to the paper’s 2011 Pulitzer Prize for public service — and went on to cover the trials of the city’s former officials. She later contributed to the paper’s coverage of the San Bernardino terror attack that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. As a regional reporter, she wrote features about the San Gabriel Valley and the Westside. During her courts beat, she covered high-profile criminal cases and civil disputes, including the Jackson family vs AEG and Bryan Stow vs LA Dodgers. She and two colleagues investigated sheriff’s deputies whose histories of misconduct landed them on the department’s top-secret Brady list. She left The Times in January 2019. Raised in the Midwest, she is a graduate of Macalester College.

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