An Indiana father has been charged with neglect resulting in serious bodily injury after allegedly shaking his 3-month-old daughter until she stopped breathing.
Neil McCaffery, 26, was arrested on Wednesday, a week after his baby daughter was taken to the hospital with a severe brain bleed, WXIN reported.
Muncie Police said they were called to the family’s home on May 8 for an “unresponsive infant.” The parents told officers the baby had a “gas bubble” stuck in her throat and that they had been attempting to burp her when she “went limp.” Medics determined the girl was having a seizure, and she was flown to Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis, where she was diagnosed with a “bilateral subdural hematoma” causing acute bleeding in the brain and layers of her eyes.
The baby was rushed into surgery to relieve pressure on the brain. Days later, the girl went into cardiac arrest, and doctors found that she had bleeding on both sides of her brain, in her eyes, and along her spinal cord.
The child was placed on a feeding tube, and doctors said she would likely experience developmental delays.
They also said her injuries were consistent with being shaken or thrown on the ground.
In an initial interview with police, McCaffery said that he came home from work that day and was outside doing yard work when his wife said their baby was ussy from a “gas bubble.” He took the baby into his bedroom, where he put her on his knee and slapped her back to get her to burp. After that he put the baby on the bed and went “to count money.” His wife, he said, was in the room.
But hs suddenly noticed the baby’s ace was turning blue and that she was limp. While his wife called 911, he said, he put the child in front of a fan because she was hot.
In her initial interview, the child’s mother corroborated her husband’s statement except to say she was not in the room. When officers told her the child’s injuries were consistent with being shaken, she said she’d never done that.
Then she officers that her husband came into the house after hearing the baby “crying uncontrollaby” and took the baby into the bedroom. She said they were in the room for about four minutes until the baby stopped crying. Then McCaffrey came out and said she wasn’t breathing.
McCaffrey was booked into the Delaware County Jail and quickly released on a $20,000 bond.
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[Featured image: Neil McCaffrey/Delaware County Sheriff’s Office]
