"Stay-at-home" dad charged with 1st-degree murder in death of 14-month-old daughter (Raleigh, North Carolina)

Yet another "hardworking" stay-at-home dad with a dead child (i.e. yet another deadbeat pothead dad with a dead child). He and his enabler mother want us to believe that JONATHAN B. PERRY just picked up this child and her neck mysteriously cracked.

No. Don't think so. Doesn't exactly explain all the injuries that this child was found with, does it? Fatal injuries like the ones listed below are NOT a result from lifting a child or falling off the couch. And unless the reporter is making an error, Daddy can't even seem to make up his mind whether the baby was on the couch or on the floor when he "found" her.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/12/14/861201/father-in-court-in-childs-death.html

Father in court in child's death
BY THOMASI MCDONALD - Staff Writer

RALEIGH -- Wake County District Court Judge Ned Mangum told Jonathan B. Perry that he could be put to death if he is convicted of murdering his 14-month-old daughter.

Perry, 23, of 522 N. Allen Road made his first court appearance Monday after police charged him Friday with first-degree murder and felony child abuse of his own child, Jadajai Wright.

But Perry's mother, Annie Perry, described her son as a hard-working man who took care of his three children. "You have to know my son," Perry said late Monday afternoon.

Perry told a hospital chaplain that he had found the toddler unresponsive on a couch Dec. 7 and that when he picked her up, he heard "what sounded like her neck cracking," court records show. So he called 911 for help, and she was taken to WakeMed in Raleigh. Authorities there reported to police that Jadajai may have been the victim of child abuse, then took her to UNC Hospitals, where she died that day.

According to a search warrant made public Monday, UNC Hospital pediatrician Molly Berkoff confirmed that Jadajai was brain dead and had suffered a pulmonary contusion on her lung, a large bruise on her right thigh, a possible broken thigh bone and extensive hemorrhaging from her eyes.

According to a Wake County Department of Human Services report, Perry told medical officials that he had given Jadajai milk in a bottle and then gone to the bathroom, court records show. He said he was gone for 10 minutes and found the baby unresponsive when he returned.

Annie Perry said that she has spoken with her son twice since his arrest and that he denies abusing the child.

"He and the baby got up at 10:20 [that morning]. He fixed her a bottle and, at about 10:45, laid her on the couch. After he gave her the bottle, he went in the bathroom.

"Before he could finish, the phone rang. It was Sabrina, the baby's mother. He went past the living room and saw the baby on the floor, off the couch. He told the mother that he was fixing to call 911. She called 911, too.

"While he was on the phone the operator [told] him how to perform CPR. When they [the EMS workers] got there, they couldn't pull all the way up to the house. So they got out, ran into the house, grabbed the baby and took her to WakeMed."

Berkoff expressed doubt that Jadajai's death could have been the result of an underlying condition.

She told Wake Forest detectives that the type of injuryJadajai endured would have resulted in a "quick onset of symptoms, rather than slow-developing symptoms," according to the court affidavit.

"How would the police know? They weren't even there!" Annie Perry said.

Police obtained a warrant Wednesday and searched Jonathan Perry's residence the day after Jadajai died. They found a half-burned marijuana cigarette in the living room and another portion of a marijuana cigarette on a bedroom nightstand, court records show.

They searched the home again Thursday and recovered a laptop computer, cell phone, baby bottle and towel.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/12/14/861201/father-in-court-in-childs-death.html#ixzz186gn0YRS