Charles City woman sentenced for seriously injuring child, returned to Winneshiek County

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A Charles City woman has been sentenced to prison for seriously injuring a child and has been transferred to Winneshiek County to serve time there for violating probation from a previous conviction involving a child.

Samantha Ann Slaughter, 37, was sentenced Monday, June 23, in Floyd County District Court to two consecutive terms of up to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to child endangerment resulting in serious injury, and willful injury causing serious injury, both Class C felonies.

The charges stem from a Feb. 13 incident in Charles City where Slaughter, according to court documents, physically assaulted a child who lived in the same home. The child was not identified in public records by name, age, gender or relationship to Slaughter, but suffered multiple severe injuries.

District Court Judge DeDra Schroeder ordered that Slaughter’s Floyd County sentences be served consecutively – one after the other – for a total of up to 20 years. However, the sentences are to be served concurrently with a separate case in Winneshiek County.

That case dates back to Feb. 1, 2024, when Slaughter – then using her previous name, Samantha Ann Jones – was charged with child endangerment and assault causing bodily injury.

She had pleaded guilty in Winneshiek County District Court in March to one aggravated misdemeanor and one serious misdemeanor. The court there sentenced her to two years in prison on the child endangerment charge and one year in jail on the assault charge, but suspended both sentences and placed her on two years of supervised probation.

The alleged victim in the Winneshiek County case was also identified only by initials, and court records indicate it was likely a different child than in the Floyd County case.

Following Slaughter’s March 24 arrest in Charles City, the Iowa Department of Corrections filed a probation violation report in the Winneshiek County case.

On Monday, after Slaughter was sentenced in Floyd County, she was transferred from the Floyd County Jail to the Winneshiek County Jail to begin serving the now-active sentence from the probation violation and at least the first part of her sentence from Floyd County.

According to court records, the child in the Floyd County case suffered facial bruising and swelling, bleeding in both eyes, bleeding around the brain, and petechiae on the scalp or face. The injuries required emergency surgery, including removal of part of the skull to relieve pressure on the brain, and the insertion of a nasal feeding tube.

According to the criminal complaint, Slaughter assaulted the child by forcefully grabbing the child’s face, shaking and jerking their head, striking the child with their own hands, forcing the child to the floor by the neck, and slamming the child onto the floor. The complaint said the child is likely to suffer long-term, possibly permanent, deficits as a result.