FORT SMITH -- Prosecutors this week have added a first-degree murder charge to a rape charge filed last year against a Fort Smith man in the October death of his 2-year-old niece.
The Sebastian County prosecuting attorney's office amended the charges against Cohen Davis, 24, on Tuesday. He had been held in the Sebastian County jail without bail since his arrest in late October.
Davis was charged in October with rape, to which his attorney Ernie Witt of Ozark had entered an innocent plea. Prosecuting Attorney Dan Shue said the murder charge was filed after additional investigation by police.
According to a probable cause affidavit signed Tuesday by Fort Smith police detective Kyle Story, autopsy results from the state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock showed that the girl's small intestine was separated, she had extensive bruising all over her body, and there were extensive tears and hemorrhaging in her genitalia.
The medical examiner's autopsy report also stated that there was extensive soft-tissue hemorrhaging in the girl's abdominal cavity.
"The medical examiner opined that these injuries could not have been caused by a fall down the stairs," Story said in the affidavit.
Davis had told doctors when he took the girl's lifeless body to the Sparks Regional Medical Center's emergency room on Oct. 15 that she was injured when she fell down stairs at his home in the 900 block of South 19th St. Reports showed that he told doctors that she began acting strangely, so he put her in a cold shower. When she began to throw up, he took her to the hospital.
Story's affidavit said Davis was the primary caregiver for his niece, who lived with him and his wife, because his wife spent most of her time at or studying for nursing school.
Investigators reviewed video from a security camera at the home on Oct. 15, according to the affidavit. It showed Davis leaving the home with his niece and two other children, ages 5 and 7, to take the 7-year-old to school about an hour after his wife left for school. The niece was walking and appeared normal.
It shows Davis returning home carrying the niece, and she did not appear to be in distress.
An hour later, the video showed Davis, who had been alone with the niece, leaving the house carrying the niece's inert body, according to the affidavit.
Investigators found panties in the trash outside the home that had blood on them, the affidavit stated.
Davis' wife told investigators, according to the affidavit, that Davis had tried to get her to watch pornography. Investigators also found a computer used by Davis that "contained many disturbing/pornographic searches prior to the child's injury," Story's affidavit stated.
From the titles on sites visited by the computer that Story listed in the affidavit, the pornographic material appeared to be about adult men having intercourse with little girls or small female teenagers.
Metro on 02/05/2015