An Idaho man has been charged with aggravation after he allegedly fractured the skull of a week-old baby girl.
Kade Michael Jones, 25, was arrested on Wednesday and given $250,000 bond at a court hearing the following day. He also received a no contact order for the victim, should he post bail, EastIdahoNews.com reported.
The incident happened on May 11, when staff at the Idaho Falls Community Hospital alerted law enforcement to an infant with a fractured skull, bruising and swelling . The baby girl was airlifted to Children’s Primary Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, where her current condition is unknown.
According to the police report, the baby’s doctor in Idaho Falls told a detective that the parents, Jones and his wife, said “the only thing they could think of that could have caused this injury was that their daughter two-year-old had been kicked (the baby) in the head when she got up from the sofa. The doctor, however, said he was not sure if a kick in the head from a two-year-old child could have caused the damage seen in the infant.
The detective traveled to Salt Lake City, where the parents told him the same story. The detective saw the baby and said she had a “larger swollen area on the right side of the skull above the ear”.
Jones told the detective he had noticed the swollen area days before, but the couple decided to delay medical attention until they had a regular checkup. This control prompted them to take the little girl to the hospital.
During a second interview, Jones told detectives that he put the baby on the floor to change her diaper and that “he slapped her on the side of the head with his right hand” because she cried. Blaming it on “maybe sensory overload”, Jones said he hit the baby “harder than he wanted to” out of anger.
He said he didn’t see any bruises when he finished changing the diaper.
Jones has a preliminary hearing scheduled for June 8 and faces up to 15 years in prison and a $50,000 fine if convicted.
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[Featured image: Kade Michael Jones/Bingham County Jail]