The case against Makenzie Critton draws on several alleged incidents involving her daughter before the fatal July 27 emergency.
MILWAUKEE — Prosecutors charging a Milwaukee mother after her 7-month-old daughter’s death are using a Wisconsin law built specifically around repeated abuse, alleging that the fatal July 27 incident was preceded by multiple episodes involving the same infant over several weeks.
Makenzie D. Critton, 22, faces one count of physical abuse of a child, repeated acts causing death. Under Wisconsin law, that offense is not simply another name for a homicide allegation. The repeated-acts provision requires prosecutors to prove three or more qualifying child-abuse violations involving the same child during a specified period. When at least one of those violations causes the child’s death, the charge is a Class A felony. In Critton’s case, the complaint alleges a period beginning in June and ending with the baby’s death July 27.
That legal framework explains why the charging document devotes substantial attention to what relatives and other people said they saw before the fatal emergency. One of the earliest incidents described publicly came from the baby’s grandmother. She told police that in June she saw Critton obstruct the child’s breathing while reacting to the baby’s crying, according to the complaint. The grandmother said she intervened, removed the child from Critton and cared for the infant herself for the remainder of the day.
The grandmother also told investigators that she had not reported that earlier incident to police when it occurred. Her account surfaced only after the infant was found unresponsive weeks later. According to prosecutors, she then told an officer that she was concerned Critton could have repeated the conduct she said she had already witnessed. The available reports do not indicate that law enforcement had been informed of the June allegation before the child’s death.
A different account came from the baby’s father. Local reporting based on the complaint says he described another occasion when he encountered a situation in which the infant’s breathing had been obstructed and intervened. He reportedly warned Critton not to do it again. That alleged episode matters to prosecutors because it is separate from both the grandmother’s account and the final July 27 incident, helping form the multiple-event theory behind the repeated-acts charge.
Investigators gathered still more statements from people who had been around Critton and the baby. The complaint, as summarized by several local news organizations, describes allegations that the infant had been struck or shaken during other incidents. Those statements remain allegations from witnesses rather than facts established at trial. Their significance in the complaint is that prosecutors portray them as part of a broader course of conduct involving the same child, rather than as unrelated observations.
The final morning entered the investigation in a different way: through Critton’s own 911 call. She contacted emergency dispatchers after finding the baby unresponsive, according to the complaint. Officers arrived at the North 25th Street home and found the infant without a pulse and not breathing. First responders performed CPR and were able to detect a faint pulse before taking the child to Children’s Wisconsin. Despite further lifesaving efforts, the infant was pronounced dead later that day.
Before police confronted Critton with the earlier allegation from the grandmother, she described what sounded like a routine morning. She said she had fed and changed her daughter, placed her in a car seat and gone back to sleep, according to prosecutors. She said she later awakened, checked on the baby and discovered the child was not breathing. That initial account became one part of the evidence investigators compared with witness statements and with what Critton allegedly said during additional questioning.
Prosecutors say Critton eventually acknowledged becoming frustrated by the infant’s crying. The complaint quotes her saying, “I got frustrated.” Authorities allege that she then admitted intentionally holding the child’s face against her body until the baby stopped moving or breathing. Reports based on the complaint differ on the exact duration Critton allegedly described, so the precise number of minutes remains unclear in the public accounts. The allegation that she intentionally interfered with the baby’s breathing, however, is consistent across the reports reviewed.
The state also alleges that Critton admitted earlier episodes of similar conduct. According to the complaint, she said the child had resumed breathing after prior incidents and that she expected that to happen again. Prosecutors cite that account alongside the statements from the grandmother and the baby’s father. The combination gives the charging document multiple alleged events to support a statute that requires proof of repeated violations rather than just one.
If the case ultimately goes before a jury on the repeated-acts count, Wisconsin law contains a rule tailored to this kind of prosecution. Jurors must unanimously agree that the required number of qualifying violations occurred within the charged period, although the statute does not require every juror to select the same individual acts as the three violations. Prosecutors still must prove the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. The rule does not make witness allegations automatically true, and Critton retains the same presumption of innocence that applies in other criminal cases.
One issue outside the witness chronology also remained unresolved in the earliest reporting. CBS 58 reported that a final determination of the child’s cause and manner of death was pending after charges were filed. The criminal complaint alleges that the repeated abuse resulted in the infant’s death, but the publicly reported status of the medical finding had not caught up with that prosecutorial allegation. The distinction leaves medical causation among the issues that may become important as the case proceeds.
Critton appeared in court for an initial appearance July 31, according to local news reports. A Class A felony carries life imprisonment if a defendant is convicted, making the case one of the most serious types of prosecution available under Wisconsin’s child-abuse statute. Public reporting reviewed for this article does not establish a later conviction, plea or other final disposition. The state’s case therefore remains an allegation built around the very feature named in the charge: prosecutors say what happened to the infant was part of a repeated pattern, not a single event viewed in isolation.
Author note: Last updated September 9, 2026.