OGDEN — An Ogden man was arrested Friday night and accused of killing his 4-month-old baby.
Ogden police responded to a medical call in the 2500 block of Lincoln Avenue on Dec. 27 and discovered a 4-month-old was not breathing, according to a police booking affidavit.
She was rushed to a nearby hospital, and then to Primary Children’s Hospital, where “medical scans revealed that (she) had sustained a catastrophic brain bleed which was caused by non-accidental abusive head trauma.”
The baby, Elizabeth Jayne Horsley, died of her injuries, according to an obituary published Friday.
Only the baby’s parents had “care and custody of (her) in the relevant time period during which the trauma would have been caused,” the affidavit alleges.
The mother said her baby was “responsive and normal,” until the father, Nichiolas James Horsley, took the infant into the other room, emerging 10 to 20 minutes later with the child “completely lifeless and not breathing,” the arrest report says.
Police say medical professionals reported that “the onset of symptoms would have been rapid and she would not have been normal after the infliction of these injuries.”
Horsley, 27, was booked into the Weber County Jail for investigation of child abuse homicide and endangerment of a child. Police have requested that he be held without bail. No formal charges have been filed in the case so far.
While police were at the house, they reported seeing an 18-month-old child, one of the couple’s two other children, “reaching for a pile of marijuana on the coffee table and had to be encouraged to leave the marijuana alone,” the affidavit says.
