Florida man accused of ‘viciously’ beating baby to death

good afternoon thank you for being with me today at the Sheriff's Office why we talk to you about a very significant issue but the first one to speak is going to be Chief Andy Ray from the BTO Police Department because we assisted Chief Ray so he will give you the preliminary information and then I'll talk to you about the investigative side Chief come on up sir thank you good afternoon uh my name is Andy Ray it's n d y r a y and the police chief in Barto we're going to talk to you today about a uh an investigation that started in Barto um Thursday evening the 22nd of February Barto officers were dispatched to the Barto Hospital BTO Regional Hospital uh to report of a child uh that was injured and had arrived uh in cardiac arrest so first officers on scene uh made contact in the emergency room uh with the medical personnel there and they were working feverishly to save this child's life uh turns out that the child is a four-month-old little girl uh those officers being given some information at the scene then contacted uh supervision and asked for a detective when of our detectives responded uh Supervisor was notified as well and started investigation there initially there was not a great opportunity to get a lot of information because uh the whole team at the emergency room was working to save the child's life um that was a little bit uh after 8:30 in the evening on Thursday evening a helicopter was dispatched a medical helicopter was dispatched and the child was stabilized briefly um and then placed on the helicopter and flown to St Joseph's Hospital in Tampa our detectives went over there along with supervision to get some more details about the investigation and also the status of the child once they got there and got some answers at that point it was obvious that um that the child had multiple injuries and U uh at that point I contacted my colleagues at the Sheriff's Office uh spoke with the investigations major um and requested their assistance in the investigation they then dispatched homicide investigators from the Bureau of Criminal investigations at the Sheriff's Office and and uh they arrived were briefed and then took over the investigation at that point very thankful as always for our relationship with the p County Sheriff's Office um again I say it every time we work very well together here in P County we uh all know each other we all appreciate and support each other and we all respect each other based on the information that we have and the experience that we have uh so I'm thankful for that thankful for our Partnerships and uh and thankful for the outcome of this investigation so I'm going to turn that over now to the sheriff for for the rest of the information thank you thank you Chief and I Dido that cooperation that's how we work here and we've always worked here is we work together and I have a very experienced homicide team and the blessing is in the city of Barto they very rarely have a homicide so they call us when they have one so unfortunately we get a lot more opportunities to investigate than most other agencies because of the vastness of the sheriff's office but I want to introduce you to a murderer to someone who viciously murdered his beautiful four-year-old baby girl that they refer to as strawberry now it appears to me that normal society can't understand this kind of person well I can tell you from a great deal of experience that a lifelong law enforcement officer can't understand this kind of person either but here he is Jacob Kuai he's 22 years of age he and his wife had this baby just four months ago and on February the 22nd in the evening Jacob Strawberry w took Mom to work they dropped her off at the Texas Cattle Company in Lakeland at about 5 minutes to 5 in the afternoon and then he went home with the baby I might also add that mom works also at Buffalo Wild Wings so she's working two jobs and Jacob's staying home with a baby so he arrives at home and he then at about 20 minutes to I guess it's about 20 minutes to six when he gets back home he plays video games for a while he discovers while he's fixing dinner that he doesn't have any chicken broth for the food so he said he took the baby strawberry and went to Walmart he told us this now we pull the video at Walmart he has no baby and then we watch him shop and then he comes through the line to self check out with no baby then he goes home at about about 654 he so he's at Walmart less than 10 minutes he said at 750 in the evening about 7:50 he fed the baby and checked on her every 10 minutes we thought that was a little Str strange at 7:50 fed the baby checked on her at 8:00 checked on her at 8:10 p.m. he checked on her and found the baby unresponsive he said he tried CPR investigation shows that he gave five compressions he saw that the baby still was unresponsive so he grabbed the baby up and drove to Barto Regional where the Barto Police Department was notified as the chief said then they flew the baby to St Joe and here's what they discovered at autopsy and they discovered many of these injuries as well they discovered that night that the baby had a skull fracture that the child had multiple impact bruises to the forehead that the baby had 10 ribs fractured that she had a hemorrhage in her spine that she had multiple layers of BL brain bleed still the baby fought for life and lived two more days before she died then an autopsy was completed and at autopsy it gave the details our detective said they counted a minimum of 10 strikes to the forehead did you hear that the baby was beaten in the forehead at least by 10 different strikes 10 ribs were fractured and they said they that was would have been from a squeezing of the child in addition to that this significant skull fracture to the back of the head the medical examiner said it would have occurred by striking a hard object the baby was literally beaten to death and the only person that was home with the baby at the time was Jacob we interviewed mom and Mom said the baby had no bruising when she went to work the baby had no was not complaining or Restless as an infant would be that had significant injuries it leaves only him so our detectives who are simply the very best in on our homicide team try to talk to him and first he's totally Lucid goes you know I don't know what you're talking about we put him in a Cell told him he was going to be charged eventually with aggravated manslaughter child abuse aggravated child abuse and then when we took him out of the interview room because he wanted to talk to us some more he started saying things like none of this is real my wife's not real my baby's not real this is a fantasy it just didn't happen he began began immediately playing games with us he showed zero remorse he shed not one tear and yet he is literally beaten and squeezed his baby to death at four months old no remorse no emotion nothing mother responded appropriately when she heard of this injury to her child and couldn't understand how it happened the case is still under investigation he's locked up in the county jail and occasionally you really really really see people that based upon the investigation of the death of the injury you wonder why God allows them to breathe air here's one that I wonder why God allows him to breathe air after you see the investigation and what this baby was was exposed to before she died any questions was there any other sort of that is still under investigation we don't we don't see any previous complaints to DCF and obviously we've been dealing with the instant injuries and the instant death and we will follow up with that as before this investigation is completed to to see if there's any older injuries but you know how much older can injuries be the baby's only four months old so there's more work to do more investigation to do but at this point in the investigation and we never say never as you know we have no investigative information that would lead us to believe mother participated in this or knew about it and certainly if the baby's healthy when she goes to work and then she's called that the baby's at the hospital unresponsive she's got as many questions as you would expect a mother to when she said I just saw this baby just a couple hours ago when I came to work so while she's working and trying to make ends meet this sorry human being is home beating the child well it's really subject to the best interpretation of the timeline that the detectives see they think it was before he went to Walmart but we've not completed the investigation yet our supposition is it was before he went to Walmart Jeffrey aware of any mental issues that he's had previously no no previous mental issues and he was totally lucid and rational until he found out what kind of trouble he was in and then he didn't remember anything life has become a blank well criminal hisory no criminal history talk injes well certainly we certainly when you see these injuries and this Baby's four months old you know that there a baby four month old is not mobile so when you see 10 separate sets of bruising across the forehead you see a fra fracture across the back of the head and the medical examiner said is calls from hitting a hard object when you see 10 ribs are broken that's from either squeezing or beating them in the ribs when you see that the child had a hemorrhage in the spinal column that's just all indicative of a horrific beating that's still under investigation once again we we have other Snippets of information that are certainly going to be followed up but we have focused on the murder of this child and then we'll go back after we get this piece of it done and tie the Loose Ends of it up when we release this information to you this soon after an arrest or an investigation you know we don't have the loose ends tied up to the investigation zero zero okay we all seek answers for this we all think there's got to be an answer there's got to be an answer it's got to be a mistake because nobody could beat a former old beautiful little girl to death he can and he did okay thank you

Channel: FOX 13 Tampa Bay

Views: 843,089

Keywords: Crime, murder, homicide, Grady Judd, Sheriff Judd, Florida man, Florida man kills baby, Bartow, Bartow murder, Florida crime, man kills daughter

Id: SM1YqAT0GLA

Length: 15min 42sec (942 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2024