HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — A 20-year-old mother called 911 on Oct. 14 to report that her baby girl was cold, pale, and unresponsive after a nap in her bassinet at her home in Hollywood, according to police.
Fire rescue personnel responded, performed CPR, and took the 7-week-old girl to the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, where she was declared brain dead on Oct. 18 and was on a ventilator for an organ transplant on Oct. 22.
Investigators found that a pediatrician reported the baby was in good health on Oct. 8, and the baby’s parents, Gracie Tellez and Robert L. Ingram Jr., used their phones to play Call of Duty and watch YouTube before the 911 call on Oct. 14, records show.
“She has always stuck through. She has always been my right hand. She’s the one who takes care of the kids, her siblings. The smallest one is 2 years old,” Tellez’s mother, Jessica Navarro, told Broward Circuit Judge Edward H. Merrigan, Jr., on Friday in court.
During her testimony, Navarro pleaded for her daughter’s release from jail. Merrigan agreed to release her on a $15,000 bond.
The Broward County Medical Examiner ruled the baby’s cause of death to be complications of blunt head trauma and classified the manner of death as a homicide. The baby’s reported injuries included bleeding in both eyes, retinal detachments, skull fractures, and hemorrhages along her spine.
A Broward County judge issued arrest warrants for Tellez and Ingram on July 27. The U.S. Marshals reported arresting them on July 29 in the 1300th block of Marsh Grass Court in Jacksonville.
Broward Sheriff’s Office corrections booked Tellez and Ingram, 22, on Aug. 13.
“She is my firstborn child,” Navarro said in court about Tellez.
Tellez turned 21 on Aug. 20 and was behind bars at the North Broward Bureau, and Ingram was at the Paul Rein Detention Facility on Friday, according to inmate records.
A judge denied Tellez’s bond on a charge of child neglect with great bodily harm and set her bond at $15,000 on a charge of aggravated manslaughter of a child. A judge denied Ingram bond on both charges.
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