Arriving home after a date night this past March, Alicia Quinney and Joshua Marbury were still on the sidewalk outside their home in the Portland area of Oregon when they heard their 12-month-old son, Jacob, crying from inside the house.
Quinney and Marbury had left their children, 3-year-old Jaylynn and Jacob, with Marbury’s long-time best friend, who had been living with them. [Because he has not been arrested, TODAY Parents is not identifying the man’s name.] “He was like family to us,” Quinney said, adding his friend had watched the kids several times before without incident. “We never expected this.”
Marbury says his friend claimed to have put the children to bed earlier and not to have heard Jacob’s cries.
The next morning, Jacob had a black eye when he woke up, and new bruises kept swelling up all over his body throughout the day: a hand-shaped, black and blue bruise on the side of his face as well as marks inside his ears and on his arms, back, collarbone, and underneath his eyes.