Prosecutors this week charged the stepfather of a 21-month-old girl with firstdegree battery — nearly three months after he and the child’s mother took the baby, unresponsive, to Booneville Hospital.
A brain scan revealed bleeding and swelling, and an X-ray showed old rib fractures, according to the arrest affidavit of Thomas Edward Smith, 26, who was charged Tuesday in the injury of Brookelynn LeAnn Davis at the family’s apartment in Booneville on Sept. 16.
Brookelynn, then 18 months old, was flown to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock shortly after Smith and her mother, Jennifer Shook, arrived at the Booneville emergency room with the unconscious baby.
The girl remains in the hospital, said Maranda Davis, a first cousin to Smith’s mother.
“They’re saying she’s not going home,” Davis said of the baby. “There’s nothing inside. It’s just a body.”
Members of Brookelynn’s family said they have lobbied authorities to pursue charges and were unhappy with prosecutors’ apparent lack of action in the case — until Tuesday.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette began seeking information about the case Nov. 30. Neither 15th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney Tom Tatum II, nor his deputy prosecuting attorney in Logan County, Brian Mueller, have returned multiple phone calls, including on Thursday.
Booneville Police Chief Albert Brown said Thursday that he could not comment. He said Tatum had asked for all media inquiries to go through Tatum’s office.
Smith was being held without bail Thursday in the Booneville jail.
He told investigators that Brookelynn was fine when he put her on a mattress on the floor for a nap, but he later found her limp and gasping for air, according to an arrest affidavit filed Monday in Logan County Circuit Court.
Brookelynn is now in the custody of the state Department of Human Services, Davis said, adding that doctors have given little hope that she will survive.
The baby breathes through a tracheal tube and is fed through a feeding tube in her stomach, Davis said. She is blind and deaf, and had her right foot amputated because of blood-flow complications during brain surgery, she added.
“It’s hard as a mother of a daughter the same age to know that my daughter is going to live a wonderful life, and Brookelynn will never have a chance,” Davis said through tears. Her daughter, Sunni, and Brookelynn are three months apart in age.
Brookelynn was born March 1, 2011.
On the day Brookelynn was injured, Shook and Smith said the baby was fine and acting normally, the arrest affidavit said. He said he took her upstairs and put her down for a nap on a mattress lying on a carpeted floor.
The affidavit said the two adults went outside together briefly, then Smith went back upstairs to clean a bathroom. While digging around in a hallway closet, he said he heard the baby gasping for air. When he went into Brookelynn’s room, he found her lying half off the bed; when he picked her up, he said she was “limp like a noodle,” according to the affidavit.
Smith told investigators that the baby “was fine when he laid her down for a nap and was unresponsive when he found her later, and no one else had been in the house or went upstairs.”
A report by Dr. Jerry Jones, director of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Team for Children at Risk, confirmed the Booneville Hospital’s findings that Brookelynn’s head injury was caused by abuse and her rib fractures indicated previous abuse, according to the affidavit.
Davis, who lives in Little Rock, said she visits Brookelynn as often as she’s permitted, roughly one hour every week. When she asked hospital personnel what she could do or take for Brookelynn, she said they told her socks and “onesies” in a size for 24-month-olds. She wrote it on a sticky note and keeps it on a mirror at her home.
“She didn’t even have any of her own clothes,” Davis said, again through tears. “She only has one foot. How hard can it be to bring her socks?”
Another frequent visitor is Patricia L. McLemore, Brookelynn’s “Grammie.” She said her son, Christopher Davis, is Brookelynn’s father, although she said Shook recently cast some doubt on that. Christopher Davis is currently an inmate in the state prison’s Tucker Unit.
No telephone number was listed for Shook at the apartment where she lived with Smith at 668 S. Sharpe, No. 38, in Booneville, and no number was listed for a Smith living at the address on the arrest affidavit.
McLemore said she has been looking for answers as to why law enforcement officials and prosecutors have taken so long to pursue charges in the case. Around the end of October, she said, she sent at least 10 letters to local law enforcement officials, legislators, Tatum, Mueller, the Arkansas State Police commander for the troop overseeing the case, the governor and the attorney general.
“My granddaughter is now in a vegetative state,” McLemore wrote in the letters, which she showed to the Democrat-Gazette. In them, she asked why no arrest had been made in the case. Four of the letter recipients answered her back, each referring her to other agencies or saying that only the county prosecutor had authority to prosecute the case.
In his written response, Jason Massey, an investigator with the Logan County sheriff ’s office, told McLemore that the case was being handled by the Booneville Police Department with assistance from state police.
“We do not know anything about the case other than that,” Massey wrote. “You will need to contact one of those agencies for more information. I am sorry I cannot answer your questions.”
Capt. Henry LeMar with the state police Criminal Investigation Division in Fort Smith told her in his response that he was unable to release information on an ongoing investigation.
“I can tell you that we are assisting the local police department and the prosecutor’s office with the investigation and it is being actively worked,” LeMar wrote.
Gary Glisson, an administrator with the state police Crimes Against Children Division in Little Rock, told McLemore in his response that his agency does not handle prosecution and for her to address her concerns to law enforcement agencies and the prosecutor.
The state attorney general’s office responded that it has no authority to investigate or prosecute criminal cases and directed her to the governor’s office, Department of Human Services and to the Arkansas Child Abuse Hotline.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/07/2012