Minnesota day care worker accused of fatally suffocating baby days before his first birthday ‘to seek attention’

A deranged day care worker in Minnesota with a history of making a spectacle of herself suffocated an infant to death mere days before his birthday in a desperate attempt to attract “attention,” police said.

Theah Loudemia Russell, 18, allegedly confessed to “intentionally suffocating” two children at the since-shuttered Rocking Horse Ranch day care in Savage, Minn. last fall, Savage Police Chief Brady Juell said at a press conference Wednesday.

On Sept. 22, 2025, Russell called the police to report that a young boy, later identified as 11-month-old Harvey Muklebust, was not breathing. Harvey was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly before noon.

Just two hours earlier that same morning, a young girl at the day care was also found “unresponsive and not breathing with blood around her nose and mouth.”

Juell said police were not notified of the incident involving the girl in part because she was found “not breathing” at the day care just three days before, and it was surmised to have been a sporadic “medical episode.”

Police responded to the first emergency and rushed the girl to the hospital. In the second instance, her parents took her for medical treatment themselves, Juell said.

Juell said Russell’s bizarre “behavior and actions at the scene immediately raised suspicion, drawing investigative focus to her as the primary person of interest.”

Over the three-month investigation, authorities from multiple agencies, including a behavioral analysis unit, dove deep into Russell’s complicated background.

They found “a documented history of attention-seeking behavior” expressed through “nonsensical” 911 calls, fire-starting and other types of “erratic behavior towards other children,” Juell said.

When Russell was brought in for an interview with police, she allegedly confessed to “intentionally suffocating” Muklebust and the female child “in an attention-seeking act.” Juell claimed that she also “confessed to the attempted murder of our first victim on two other occasions and to the murder of Harvey Muklebust.”

Juell said that Russell was only hired three weeks before Muklebust’s death.

Harvey, affectionately nicknamed the “Harv Monster,” was set to celebrate his first birthday on Sept. 27, according to his obituary.

The Muklebust family wrote that Harvey was a bundle of “pure happiness and sunshine” whose “favorite thing in the world was being surrounded by his family.”

“Harvey could light up an entire room with his contagious smile and filled everyone’s hearts with joy through his adorable laugh,” his obituary read.

At the press conference, Harvey’s grandmother, Julie Muklebust, detailed the little indents their baby boy left behind that the family isn’t ready to erase yet, including “fingerprints” and “drool stains.”

“Those are the little things that I’m not ready to wash away. We miss him more than anything in this world, but we try to remember with each ray of sunshine, each gentle breeze, and each star in the sky that he’s always with us shining down,” she choked.

“Harvey, every day we ask ourselves, ‘Why did it have to be you?’ Every day we live with the pain of what happened to you, but we promise that every day we will say your name. Every day we will continue to fight for you and in the end we will make sure that justice has been served.”

Russell is being held at the Scott County Jail on a second-degree murder charge, according to inmate records.