Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Dad gets 10 years for felony abuse of newborn daughter (Joplin, Missouri)

Dad is identified as CODY W. WILLIAMS.

http://www.joplinglobe.com/news/crime_and_courts/joplin-father-sent-to-prison-in-shaken-baby-case/article_dd612dc6-6640-5d85-b010-2bc3cd5a0bd1.html

Joplin father sent to prison in 2014 shaken-baby case

Posted: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 3:11 pm

A 26-year-old Joplin father received a 10-year sentence Monday on a conviction for felony child abuse of his newborn baby.

Circuit Judge David Dally assessed Cody W. Williams the prison term at a sentencing hearing in Jasper County Circuit Court. Williams had pleaded guilty to the charge Nov. 3 in a plea agreement limiting the prison time he might receive to no more than 10 years.

The defendant’s 6-week-old daughter, Desileigh, was brought to the emergency room of Freeman Hospital West suffering seizures on the morning of Jan. 2, 2014. Doctors soon decided the girl had suffered a shaken-baby injury and she was flown by medical helicopter to Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.

The father was interviewed by child-abuse investigators later the same day and placed under arrest.

Williams admitted that he had shaken his daughter when she would not stop crying about 3:30 a.m. inside their home at 114 S. Butler Ave. He demonstrated with a doll what he had done with his daughter and an investigator wrote in a probable-cause affidavit that he “violently shook the (doll) more than one time.”