TAYLORSVILLE, Utah, Oct. 22, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — A Taylorsville woman has been arrested on suspicion of causing the death of an infant she was babysitting.
Suspect Paulina Carmona-Simbron, 47, was charged with child abuse homicide — reckless, a first-degree felony, following an Oct. 13 incident at her residence.
Taylorsville City Police arrived on a call of an unresponsive baby, and found the 5.5 month old girl with no visible injuries. The baby was transported to Intermountain Medical Center, then taken to Primary Children’s Hospital.
Doctors scanned the baby’s head and found evidence of severe brain injury consistent with Shaken Baby Syndrome, arrest documents say.
Carmona-Simbron told officers the baby coughed, so she picked up the infant, then the baby turned blue and stopped breathing.
“Det. Barrett provided her a baby (doll), to demonstrate how she physically handled the infant. As she was explaining, Det. Barrett, Ofc. Johnson and I observed her handle the baby in a fashion that resembled violent and harsh movement. When the demonstration was brought to her attention by Det. Barrett, Carmona changed her motion/demonstration and held the doll still as if she was just rocking it.
“She also physically demonstrated that she held the infant on the torso with both hands, without supporting her head, as Carmona bounced AA on her knee up and down, which is believed to be an inappropriate manner, due to a 5.5 month old child not being able to have the strength to support their head,” the suspect’s probable cause statement says.
A doctor advised investigators that “even if there were prior injuries to (the infant’s) brain, prior to this traumatic event, it would still require the great amount of force that she was describing to cause the injury observed in the scan that was reviewed and stated that the timeline of injury to the ‘collapse’/unresponsiveness of AA would have been immediate or ensuing the actions.
The doctor was “very confident it was caused by a very forceful and inertial action to move the infant in a violent way that would cause such internal/subdural hemorrhaging to (the baby’s) retinas and separation of the arteries between the brain and the tissue linings of the skull,” the police statement says.
The baby died the next night in the hospital.
Investigators also learned Carmona-Simbron, a citizen of Mexico, has been in the country illegally since 2011.
Carmona-Simbron is being held in the Salt Lake County jail system, in part due to the severity of the charges and the suspicion she might flee.
