A Minnesota community is reeling after police revealed that an 18-year-old daycare employee confessed to suffocating an eleven-month-old boy to death and attempting to kill another infant, allegedly describing the attacks as an “attention-seeking act.”
Theah Russell, a recent hire at the Rocking Horse Ranch daycare in Savage, was charged this week with second-degree murder and multiple counts of assault. During a press conference, Savage Police Chief Brady Juell disclosed that Russell admitted to “intentionally suffocating” the children when she was taken into custody on Tuesday.
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“She provided detailed descriptions of how she carried out the attempts against the life of the first victim on two separate occasions, and she confessed to the murder of Harvey Muklebust,” Juell told reporters.
The investigation began tragically on September 22, 2025, when officers responded to a 911 call from the facility reporting that 11-month-old Harvey Muklebust was not breathing. The infant was rushed to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Authorities soon uncovered a disturbing pattern involving another child at the center. Just hours before the call about Harvey, a four-month-old girl had been discovered with blood around her nose and mouth, though police were not contacted at that time. Three days prior, on September 19, emergency crews had been called to the same daycare for the same four-month-old girl, who was found unresponsive. That incident was initially ruled a medical emergency.
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Detectives noted that Russell, who had started working at the facility only three weeks earlier, was the “common denominator” in all three medical crises.
“Over the following three months, investigators conducted dozens of interviews with daycare staff, parents of children who attended, and various contractors associated with the facility, [and] a clear pattern emerged,” Chief Juell explained. “Theah Russell was a common denominator in each of these incidents. She had last contact with each of the affected children immediately prior to these events.”
The heartbroken family of Harvey Muklebust attended the police announcement, where his grandmother shared a gut-wrenching tribute to the boy who was just days away from his first birthday.
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“Harvey’s fingerprints are on my sliding glass door and his drool stains still show on these crib sheets,” she said, holding back tears. “Those are the little things that I’m not ready to wash away.”
Russell is currently being held on $3.5 million bail. She faces charges of second-degree murder, as well as first and third-degree assault for the attacks on the surviving infant. Her next court appearance is scheduled for February 4.
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