Background: Body camera footage shows Deland police officers and first responders responding to a home and finding a baby injured (Volusia County Sheriff”s Office). Inset: Kelly Ward (Volusia County Jail).
A Florida mother has been arrested nearly two years after her infant daughter was found unresponsive with life-altering injuries – and the details of the night in question present what police believe is a troubling sequence of events.
Kelly Ward, 22, has been charged with child neglect causing great bodily harm, according to Volusia County court records. The offense is believed to have occurred during the cold – by Florida standards – night of Nov. 8, 2023.
At 10 p.m. on Nov. 7, Ward and her “on again, off again boyfriend” arrived at her home in DeLand, according to a non-arrest affidavit obtained by Law&Crime. Between this time and 2 a.m. the following morning, they exited the home at least once with the baby. This boyfriend was reportedly not the 3-month-old girl’s father, though he was the father of the fetus Ward was carrying.
Nine people in total lived at the home, according to the court document – including Ward’s mother – and each of them had a story about what transpired that night.
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There was reportedly a disagreement between the residents about whether Ward’s boyfriend could stay the night. One of them told police that he gave her a “weird ‘vibe,'” and she believed “something was possibly going on with him and children.” But he did stay over that night, with the plan being for him to take Ward to a doctor’s appointment the following morning.
At one point or more during that four-hour period between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., Ward, her baby, and her boyfriend were outside. The child’s inclusion confused multiple of the home’s residents, who woke up on and off – as the temperature was in the mid-50s and “too cold for the baby to be outside.”
The baby is said to have gone to sleep between 2 and 3 a.m. but in a frantic state – “crying and screaming” and seeming to be “having night terrors due to swinging her arms in her sleep.”
At about 6 a.m. that morning, one resident said she woke up “and saw [the boyfriend] standing in the hallway just standing there.” The woman said he was not holding the baby or talking to anyone. When some of the residents of the home woke up around 8 a.m., the child was “lethargic,” one of them told police. The baby “would not open her eyes and appeared very pale,” she added.
But others reported to police that he child was crying in a normal manner when they woke up and “everything appeared to be normal.” Ward’s boyfriend checked on the baby, and Ward herself rushed to get ready for her doctor’s appointment, for which she had woken up too late, the affidavit added.
Ward and the boyfriend returned around 11 a.m., but in the meantime, Ward’s mother checked on the child. The baby was “wheezing” and not as “fussy” as usual when her diaper was being changed, she said. The infant also had bruises on her abdomen, the affidavit states, but still, no one called 911 until nearly 11:40 a.m.
Scratch marks were also found on the child, and some of the residents, including Ward, told police they believed one of the home’s two dogs stepped on the child when trying to cross the bed. Responding EMS workers were skeptical.
Per the court document, they “did not believe the dog could have caused the bruising and requested law enforcement to respond.” The dog that Ward said stepped on the child was a chihuahua, weighing “7.58 pounds with a .16-pound harness on.”
Body camera footage showed the startling moments when authorities arrived at the scene. Outside of the home, a first responder took the baby from a deputy and inquired about the medications that the baby was taking.
The deputy wearing the camera shortly after tells him that the infant “had some type of throat surgery a while ago” and was released from the hospital just about a month before. Several of the residents can be seen outside as the video is captured, but Ward’s boyfriend was not there.
Ward and the boyfriend both gave separate accounts to police about what happened, and both acknowledged that “they were the last two individuals” with the baby before she was placed in her bassinet that night. The boyfriend, whose then-1-month-old daughter’s arm was allegedly broken in a separate case with a different woman, described Ward as inattentive and preferring to be elsewhere than with her daughter. Ward gave her own account, but investigators said they found inconsistencies in her statements.
More than a month after Ward’s child’s injuries were first reported, as law enforcement continued their investigation, they asked Ward to call the boyfriend and let them listen in. During this phone call, she asked him what happened with the child in the moments she was not present, “even if it was by accident.”
“During the conversation, [the boyfriend] became irritated and stated he will not take angry management again,” the affidavit states. “It should be noted, [the boyfriend] had to take angry management after his one-month old daughter’s arm was broken in a different case that occurred in Polk County Florida.”
“Kelly then told [the boyfriend] that she was going to do a lie detector test, and asked [him] if he would, which he stated he would not do one,” the court document goes on. “[The boyfriend] told Kelly that he was told that the lie detector test is not admissible in court. Kelly then told [him] that she knows he would never hurt [the baby] on purpose,” but asked if he accidentally fell asleep with the baby while he was holding her and he denied it.
While the police documents indicated that both Ward and the boyfriend were charged with aggravated child abuse, Law&Crime could find no record of either of them having faced that charge.
The medical report on the baby’s injuries found that she was “a victim of life-threatening nonaccidental trauma.” An investigator also cited the doctor caring for the baby as saying “the injuries are not of natural causes and were consistent with Shaken Baby Syndrome also known as Shaken Impact Syndrome.” The child’s current medical status is unclear.
Court records show Ward was booked into the Volusia County Jail on Aug. 4 and made her first court appearance the following day. She was released on Aug. 9 and is set to be arraigned on Aug. 28.
