Coroner rules Miami County baby death a homicide

Credit: Miami County Jail

Credit: Miami County Jail

The September death of a 1-year-old baby was ruled a homicide by the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office.

The cause of Caelyn Colon’s death was trauma of the head and neck, Montgomery County Coroner Dr. Kent Harshbarger said in a release Thursday.

The Miami County Sheriff’s Office is continuing its investigation.

Joshua A. Mize, 30, is charged in connection to her death and is incarcerated in the Miami County Jail on $1 million bond. He has pleaded not guilty and is due back in court in December. A message to his attorney, John Meehling, didn’t immediately provide comment Thursday.

Mize was the boyfriend of Caelyn’s mother and lived at the same residence as Caelyn, her mother and two other children, according to the Miami County Sheriff’s Office.

Bradford Fire & Rescue crews responded on Sept. 14 to the 100 block of East Vine Street on a report of a child not breathing. The child, later identified as Caelyn, was resuscitated and taken to Upper Valley Medical Center. She later was transferred to Dayton Children’s.

“A criminal investigation was initiated by Miami County Sheriff’s detectives due to doctors concluding that the injuries present on the child were suspected abuse,” the sheriff’s office stated.

The Dayton Daily News obtained two 9-1-1 emergency calls through public records requests. In one 9-1-1 call, the child’s mother said her boyfriend told her the child was not breathing.

“She’s only a year old,” the mother says.

The mother says that the child had a series of health issues including being born at 33 weeks, having an underdeveloped hip on one side and aspiration issues.

The other call was placed by a man who did not identify himself, but told dispatchers that he was with the child, that the child was not breathing and he was performing CPR on her.

The dispatcher asked him what took place before she stopped breathing and he responded “Nothing happened, she has a lot of issues, her mom takes her to the doctor a lot. She has a lot of issues, medical issues.”

He later says that the child started to doze off and fell.

At the end of the three-minute call, the man told the dispatcher that the baby has started to breathe and move again and that paramedics were on the scene.

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