NEWPORT -- Third Judicial Circuit Prosecuting Attorney Henry Boyce filed a first-degree murder charge Thursday against a Newport man accused in the death of a 10-month-old child.
Benjamin Collier, 20, was charged in Jackson County Circuit Court, where Circuit Judge Harold S. Erwin ordered Collier held in the county jail in Newport in lieu of a $250,000 bond.
Collier was arrested after police were called Sept. 10 to Harmony Homes Apartments on Pecan Street in Newport. When officers and medical personnel arrived, they found the child dead, Lt. Allen Edwards of the Newport Police Department said.
Authorities sent the child's body to the state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock. Medical examiners determined that the child died of a brain injury.
Boyce said witnesses implicated Collier as being responsible for the child's death.
"We looked at the evidence in this case very carefully, and I feel we have ruled out the possibility of accidental death," Boyce said in a news release.
State Desk on 09/23/2017