Ten-month-old Emmaleigh Barringer died on Oct. 5 after allegedly being raped and beaten by her mother’s boyfriend, Benjamin Taylor, according to the West Virginia Gazette.
Since Emmaleigh’s brutal attack, Benjamin has been accused of assaulting the baby late at night on Oct. 2 or early on Oct. 3 while everyone else in the family’s home, in Jackson County, West Virginia, was asleep.
Emmaleigh’s mom, who has three other children, reportedly woke up between 4:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. and found her baby girl naked and bleeding on her basement floor.
She immediately called 911 Police said that when they arrived at the house in Meadowlark Lane in Ripley, they found Benjamin trying to “wipe something” off his groin area, which police later determined to be the baby’s blood, according to WSAZ.
At the crime scene, authorities also found blankets and clothes covered in blood, which is where Benjamin had reportedly been with the baby in the basement.
And while police said the 32-year-old man originally told them he did not know how the baby was injured, he later admitted that he “blacked out” while doing laundry with Emmaleigh.
The infant died just days later in the intensive care unit of Charleston Area Medical Center. The baby’s doctors told Jackson County deputies that her injuries were consistent with a violent sexual assault as well as a violent shaking or a striking of the baby’s face.
Benjamin is now being held at South Central Regional Jail on a $2 million dollar bond, on a single count of first-degree sexual assault. And according to local officials, they will be charging him with the baby’s murder shortly.