Background: Children”s Wisconsin hospital located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Google Maps). Inset: Martinese McDaniel (Milwaukee Police Department).
A Milwaukee man and former police officer will spend the next several years behind bars after being found guilty of abusing his baby.
Martinese McDaniel, 32, this week was sentenced to six years in prison and five years of extended supervision. In July, a jury found him guilty of two felony counts of child abuse – recklessly causing great harm.
According to a criminal complaint, McDaniel woke up on the morning of Jan. 14, 2023, at about 6:30 a.m. and spoke with his girlfriend, who agreed to take their son to a wrestling event. The girlfriend left the house about 15 minutes later, leaving McDaniel alone with their twin daughters.
The man fed both of the children and then “used a bicycle technique on each of the twins to pump their legs in an effort to alleviate gas,” according to the complaint. Then, he put the twins in a crib, but as he did so, one of them “became fussy,” the complaint reads.
“The defendant picked [the victim] up and took [her] into the living room where the defendant repeated the bicycle technique to alleviate gas in [her] abdomen,” the complaint goes on. However, as McDaniel repeated the technique, the baby “took a sharp gasp of air” – and then, “stopped breathing.”
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McDaniel said he worried his baby was choking – so he picked her up, placed her chest down in his left hand, and “patted” her upper back with two fingers “in an attempt to clear any blockage.” Still, she wasn’t breathing, and additional efforts of CPR did not work either. She was unresponsive, even after McDaniel brought her close to his face, “tapping each side of [her] face.”
The father began to “panic,” and “shook” his daughter three to four times, the court document continues. Still, his daughter did not respond. As he placed her down, his girlfriend returned home. She later told police she heard McDaniel yelling, “Call 911, she’s not breathing!”
She did so – while McDaniel performed chest compressions on the child and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, police said. While doing so, “gas expelled” from the child’s body and her “abdomen became distended,” the complaint states. McDaniel “used his fingers on [the victim’s] abdomen to relieve the gas.”
Shortly before the Milwaukee Fire Department arrived, McDaniel announced the child had started breathing again. However, “bloody sputum” came out of her mouth. The first responders took over her aid and transported her to Children’s Wisconsin hospital in Milwaukee.
Detectives arrived at the hospital later that day to ascertain what had transpired. Both McDaniel and his girlfriend told them their daughter “was in good health” prior to being left in McDaniel’s care that morning and nobody else had handled her. The girlfriend also said there were no accidents or falls where her daughter had been dropped.
But the baby’s injuries were severe.
A child abuse pediatrician “noted a significant increase in [the victim’s] head circumference, from under the 3% during the last primary care visit to well over the 85% upon admission on January 14, 2023,” the complaint states. The child also had bruises to her chest, abdomen, and left leg.
The victim was diagnosed with “a brain injury with an acute change in consciousness,” among other things, and the doctor concluded that the baby was “the victim of child physical abuse and abusive head trauma.”
The pediatrician said of the child’s future: “At this time, it is not possible to state what this child’s long-term prognosis is. It is known that she has sustained injury to her brain, as evidenced by imaging studies as well as clinical appearance. Children with this type of injury may have significant long-term morbidity, including seizure disorders, spasticity, and major developmental delay.”
As detectives continued their investigation, they learned McDaniel had security cameras on the outside of his home, and he is said to have provided the 12-hour time frame relevant to what investigators wanted to see. However, one hour was missing – between 7 and 8 a.m. on the morning of Jan. 14, 2023.
In addition to his time in prison and extended supervision, McDaniel was also ordered to finish a course in anger management, take parenting classes, and take part in any treatment or counseling needed, local Fox affiliate WITI reported.
McDaniel worked for the Milwaukee Police Department for seven years, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and was placed on paid suspension when he was charged. He was fired following his conviction.
