Trial of Quincy woman accused of killing baby niece to start Tuesday
DEDHAM − The former Quincy woman accused of beating her baby niece to death almost five years ago is set to go to trial Tuesday, March 7, in Norfolk Superior Court.
Jury selection is scheduled to start Tuesday in the case of Shu Feng Hsu, who is charged with murder. She has been in jail since November 2018, nine months after she allegedly beat her niece, Chloe Chen, so severely that she bruised the baby's face and head and caused brain damage that ultimately led to her death. A final motion hearing in the case was scheduled for Thursday, March 2.
Hsu was initially arraigned in Quincy District Court on March 22, 2018, on charges of assault and battery on a child causing serious bodily injury. When the state medical examiner determined that a blunt-force head injury caused Chloe's death, the charges against Hsu were upgraded to murder and her bail was revoked.
A Norfolk County grand jury indicted Hsu in January 2019.
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At the time of the baby's death, Hsu was living at 34 Sewall St. in Quincy. Police say Hsu was home alone with her infant niece on Feb. 15 when she called 911 at about 4:30 p.m. and said the baby had gone limp and was not responsive.
As an ambulance took the baby to Boston Medical Center, Chloe suffered multiple seizures, police said. She died two days later from what doctors described as brain injuries and bleeding in her brain.
Police say eight people were living in the Wollaston-area home at the time of Chloe's death. Police reviewed more than 100 hours of footage from several surveillance cameras inside the home but none of them showed the room where Hsu was alone with the baby for about two hours.
Police obtained audio recordings from nearby cameras that picked up noises from it the baby's room, where she is said to have cried for much of the time Hsu was alone with her. Police said it was about 4:25 p.m. when an adult entered the room and the camera picked up a “distinctive dull thump” that police say they did not hear in any of the other many hours of recording they listened to.
“A second thump radiates through the building structure” two seconds later, State Trooper Yuriy Bukhenik wrote in his report. That was followed by 10 more thumps every few seconds, police said.
About 13 seconds after the last one, the crying stopped.
The doctor who performed the autopsy said it appeared “a strike, or a form of impact” caused the injuries.
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This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Trial of Quincy's Shu Feng Hsu accused of killing baby niece to start
