Plea entered in shaken baby case

PALMER — A Wasilla man has pleaded no contest to felony assault for shaking his 3-month-old daughter, landing the child in the intensive care unit.

Keir McGee-Vermont, 21, entered his plea Dec. 19 and has agreed to serve a 15-year prison sentence, Assistant District Attorney Rachel Gernat said.

“He agreed to pay restitution for the baby’s medical care and to terminate his parental rights. All other terms are open to the court,” Gernat says in an e-mail about the plea.

Wasilla police were the first on scene at the apartment home on Snohomish Avenue where McGee-Vermont had been looking after his daughter, according to an affidavit Alaska State Trooper Investigator William Zamora filed with the case.

Troopers had been summoned by a call from McGee-Vermont’s fiancée, who said he’d called her to say he’d made a mistake, that he didn’t want to go to jail again and was going to call 911 and shoot himself.

On scene, they found the baby lying on the floor of the bathroom surrounded by cotton swabs. They also found McGee-Vermont, who agreed to an interview.

Zamora says that McGee-Vermont 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 baby went limp, according to Zamora. He tried to swab blood from her nose and mouth. He tried to revive her by putting her into a shallow bath of cold water and holding her up to cold air coming from his freezer.

Zamora says in his affidavit that the baby was taken to the intensive care unit at Providence Alaska Medical Center. She had a brain injury and her eyes were not synchronized. Zamora’s affidavit also speaks to investigations into injuries the child suffered that seemed to point to sexual abuse. A week after he was arrested for shaking the baby, McGee-Vermont was charged with sexually abusing her.

McGee-Vermont is set to be sentenced March 19 before Superior Court Judge Eric Smith. In the interim, he was ordered held without bail.