A 22-year-old Little Rock man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for inflicting bone-breaking injuries on his 18-month-old stepdaughter's face in 2018.
Sentencing papers filed Thursday by deputy prosecutor Matt Stauffer show that Keanu Juwan Brown pleaded no contest to first-degree battery of a child, a Class Y felony that carries a potential life sentence, in exchange for the 10-year sentence from Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson.
Brown and the toddler's mother took the injured child to Arkansas Children's Hospital about two weeks before Thanksgiving in 2018. The child had scrapes, bite marks and bone fractures along the left side of her face, court filings show.
Brown repeatedly denied responsibility for hurting the girl, telling investigators that the toddler's injuries were caused by a 3-year-old boy, who had pulled the girl down a flight of stairs while at the home of the child's mother.
But Dr. Rachel Clingenpeel, a pediatrician at the hospital specializing in child abuse, said the bite marks were too large to be a child's and told police that bone fractures that the child suffered are typically caused by "forceful trauma" like a car crash or a fist's strong punch in the face.
The girl's mother, Krisshala Coleman, 22, told police that Brown had dropped her off at work that morning and was supposed to drop the girl off at Coleman's cousin's home.
Coleman said she had been trying to make arrangements for others to help watch the girl because she thought Brown needed a break from caring for the child while Coleman was at work.
Coleman said she'd noticed some bruises on her daughter the week before the child was injured but that Brown denied knowing anything about them, and the questioning led to a fight between her and Brown.
The day the girl was injured, Nov. 12, 2018, Brown picked Coleman up from work and acted like nothing was wrong, Coleman told detectives. But when she saw her daughter, she could tell that the toddler was hurt and insisted that they take the girl to the hospital.
Brown made several stops along the way in what Coleman felt was an effort to keep her from taking the toddler to see doctors, court filings show. The couple also have a son who was about 3½ months old at the time.
Brown left the hospital before police arrived, but investigators found him at the family apartment. Brown, who was on probation for a February 2016 breaking-or-entering conviction, agreed to a police interview.
In that interview with detective Sarah Hicks, Brown said he'd dropped the girl off at the cousin's home, then went to work for about three hours. He left to pick up Coleman's sister from school then went to the cousin's home to pick up the toddler.
At the home, the cousin's boyfriend said their 3-year-old son had pulled the toddler down the stairs, injuring her face, Brown told Hicks. He said he took the girl to his mother's home to take care of the child while he went and picked up Coleman.
But detectives found that Brown didn't work where he claimed to have been employed and Coleman's sister denied going to the cousin's home with Brown like he had claimed.
After the cousin's boyfriend told police that the girl had not been at the house that day, Brown was arrested on the first-degree battery charge Nov. 13, 2018. Investigators confirmed that Coleman was at work when her daughter was injured, court filings show.
Under the conditions of Brown's plea agreement, negotiated by public defender Lou Marczuk, prosecutors dropped an unrelated firearm charge stemming from Brown's March 2018 arrest after police found a pistol in his car during a traffic stop.
Brown's 10-year sentence will run concurrently with the three-year sentence Brown received in exchange for pleading guilty to terroristic threatening and being in possession of a firearm for a July 12, 2017, arrest at his home in southwest Little Rock.
Metro on 01/03/2020