BATON ROUGE, La. — A Louisiana man is facing murder and child cruelty charges in connection with the death of a 16-month-old girl, authorities said.
According to The Advocate and WBRZ-TV, Baton Rouge police arrested Jonathan Dunn, 34, early Sunday, just hours after the toddler, Ja’Leah Fontenot, died at an area hospital Saturday night. He remains jailed without bond, The Advocate reported.
Police said they responded to Dunn’s Peerless Street home about 11 p.m. Saturday after receiving a report of an unresponsive child, according to the news outlets. Authorities arrived to find the toddler burned, bruised and wearing an old diaper, police said. Crews rushed her to the hospital, where the girl died of “multiple blunt-force injuries,” an autopsy later determined.
Dunn, who was not the toddler’s father but fathered two of the girl’s siblings, told police he had been watching Ja’Leah for five days, The Advocate reported. Police said he admitted to throwing the girl across the room Friday night after he had used heroin. He also claimed that the toddler accidentally burned herself with a hot iron that she had pulled down from a shelf, according to the newspaper.
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