In the clipped, clinical wording of autopsy reports everywhere, King County Medical Examiner Tim Williams noted that the little girl on the table, known in court records as “N.B.” had sustained “significant bruising to her body,” including her face, upper mid and lower chest, abdomen, back, sides, buttocks, arms, legs.
In addition to numerous broken bones — some of them recent, others at varying stages of healing — the 3 year old had sustained bleeding in her head, bruising to her pancreas, and internal bleeding from cuts to her kidneys and adrenal glands.
On June 12. the King County Prosecutor’s Office charged the girl’s 21-year-old mother, Tatiana Baker, with second-degree murder. Prosecutor’s on Monday charged Baker’s 24-year-old, live-in boyfriend, DeMarco Jackson, likewise with second-degree murder.
Baker and Jackson are to be arraigned separately at 9 a.m., on June 25, in Courtroom GA of the Regional Justice Center in Kent.
The Auburn Police Detective’s affidavits on which the charges are based allege that Baker and Jackson had beaten the child on June 9. Although in the early afternoon they called 911, they allegedly mislead police, medics and firefighters as to their whereabouts and over the course of the seven crucial hours that passed before medics and police could get to the child, failed to give her medical aid. According to the affidavits, they also allegedly lied to detectives repeatedly in the ensuing investigation.
According to the affidavit, here is what happened.
Shortly before 2:30 p.m. on June 9, an unknown male called 911 from a cell phone and asked for a nurse’s hotline because, he said, his daughter was dehydrated after playing outside. He went on to say that he had tried to give the little girl fluids, but she had begun to vomit.
The male told the 911 operator that he was calling from Auburn, but the receiver’s computer terminal showed that the call was coming from Seattle and using a cell phone tower in Auburn near the 700 block of 28th Street Southeast. When the call-receiver tried to confirm the call’s location, the call was disconnected. The receiver called the number back and a female voice said that they were in Seattle and didn’t need any aid. Police and fire responded to the 700 block of 28th Street but couldn’t find the 911 caller.
At 9:46 p.m., Valley Communications got another call from the same number. The male caller said that his daughter was unconscious and he was performing unassisted CPR, but Valley Com quickly realized it was the same man who had called earlier and he was talking about the same little girl.
Auburn Police, Valley Regional Fire Authority firefighters and King County Medics soon responded to 420 23rd St. SE. Officers tried to revive the child via CPR before medics arrived on-scene and assumed treatment of the girl. The child was loaded into a medical vehicle for transport to a hospital, but medics quickly determined that she was dead, and possibly for some time as her body was cold and showed post-mortem lividity or whiteness.
Jackson, according to the report, told the first officers at the scene that he and Baker had put N.B., and their two-month-old daughter into their vehicle to drive her to the hospital, but that he eventually took her out, laid her on the ground to continue CPR and call 911.
Baker and Jackson later came to the Auburn Police Station, where they told detectives that she and the family had been at a park for five hours and knew nothing about the earlier 911 call, which detectives already knew to be a lie. She and Jackson said that over the last week the little girl had been misbehaving and Baker had been trying to discipline her, and that when the girl failed to respond as Baker “felt she should” upped the severity of the punishment to include striking her with a belt.
Jackson allegedly told detectives that on June 9, he had watched Baker hit the toddler with a belt, and that soon escalated to slapping and backhanding. When those actions failed to get the expected response, Baker began punching her with a closed fist all over the body. De Marco also allegedly admitted to taking part in the assault after Baker had finished, suspending her in the air by one arm and then punching and hitting her time and time again in the stomach until her body went limp and she lost consciousness.
Jackson later admitted that the family had never gone to a park that day. He said that after the girl went limp, he tried to keep her awake and give her fluids. He admitted he had made the first 911 call, but that Baker had told him not to give the actual location to 911 out of fear of how police, firefighters and medics would react to the child’s actual condition.
“Neither Tatiana nor DeMarco made any efforts to seek medical assistance for N.B., until the call at (9:46 p.m.) over seven hours later. In addition to depriving N.B. [of] medical attention, DeMarco also admitted that he and Tatiana spent considerable efforts to clean the home and dispose of evidence, according to the affidavit.
“N.B. was a defenseless toddler,” Prosecuting Attorney Wyman Yip told a Superior Court judge Friday as he asked the judge to set Baker’s bail at $1 million.“[The toddler] suffered severe and repeated physical abuse at the hands of the defendant and the defendant’s boyfriend. After beating 3-year-old N.B. until her body went limp and she lost consciousness, the defendant and her boyfriend were more concerned with themselves … Instead of seeking medical attention for N.B., the defendant and her boyfriend cleaned the crime scene, disposed of evidence, and intentionally mislead police in order to save their own hides.”
