Father charged with assault for shaking baby

WASILLA — Alaska State Troopers have arrested a Wasilla man, alleging he shook his 3-month-old baby, leaving the child hospitalized.

“We have an investigator that went into Anchorage today to see if the child’s status has worsened or improved,” Trooper Sgt. Mike Burkmire said Thursday. “Our indication yesterday from the hospital staff is that the child will live.”

Wasilla police went to an apartment on Snohomish Avenue at 6:22 p.m. Tuesday having received a report from the baby’s mother, Julia Bennett, 18, of Wasilla that her fiancé, Keir McGee-Vermont, 20, called her to say he’d shaken the baby, troopers report.

McGee-Vermont told his girlfriend it was an accident and that he was going to “call 911 and shoot himself,” according to a report of the incident filed by troopers.

When police arrived, the baby was on the ground near the bathroom door surrounded by bloody cotton swabs, according to an affidavit Investigator William Zamora filed with the case.

In his affidavit, Zamora says the father told an investigator he was stressed over financial matters. The baby was crying, he shook her and he threw her into her crib, bouncing her off the crib’s railings.

McGee-Vermont said his baby went limp and he tried to swab blood from her nose and mouth, Zamora says in the affidavit. The father then put the baby into a shallow bath of cold water and held her up to cold air coming from his freezer.

Burkmire said investigators were told the cold air and water trick was one McGee-Vermont told them he learned at a parenting class.

“I’ve never been to that class or seen what the course material is, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t teach anything about putting your baby near the freezer,” Burkmire said.

According to the affidavit, the baby had dried blood in her nose and mouth, and an intracranial injury, which Burkmire described as bleeding into the brain.

On Wednesday, Zamora says doctors said the baby had swelling around her eyes and on her brain. She had a tongue laceration and her liver and heart appeared to have been squeezed, the affidavit says. She also had received a blood transfusion.

The doctor said the baby’s “left eye was ‘wandering’ and not synchronized with the right eye,” Zamora says.

McGee-Vermont was jailed on counts of first- and second-degree assault. His bail was set at $100,000.