Man Admits Violent Attack On 2-Month-Old Daughter
CROWN POINT, Ind. (STMW) - A northwest Indiana man faces a maximum 40-year sentence after he admitted that he killed his 2-month-old daughter because she wouldn't stop crying when he wanted to smoke synthetic marijuana.
Michael Thomas Ivy, 24, admitted he was angry on June 25 because he wanted to smoke some "gas station weed" in his bedroom while watching TV and McKenzie Smalley wouldn't stop crying.
Ivy moved the baby, who was in a bouncer seat, into the living room at the apartment in the 5000 block of Magoun Avenue in East Chicago, Ind., where he lived with the child's mother and two sisters, but the child wouldn't stop crying.
Ivy then crouched before the baby and placed his right knee hard into McKenzie's stomach, which caused her to defecate in her diaper. The waste oozed out of the diaper and up the baby's back. After he kneed her in the stomach, Ivy saw the baby raise her arm and gasp for air, and her eyes rolled back in her head. Ivy cleaned the child, placed her in a bouncer seat and left her in the living room while he returned to the bedroom to continue smoking the weed for another 20 to 30 minutes.
When he returned to the living room, he found McKenzie unresponsive and violently shook her. The child suffered extensive head injuries, bruises on the chest wall and recent rib fractures.
Ivy pleaded guilty to battery, which is punishable by a sentence of 20 to 50 years. Deputy prosecutor Michelle Jatkiewicz and defense attorney Teresa Hollandsworth will argue an appropriate sentence on June 27 before Lake Superior Court Judge Thomas Stefaniak Jr.
Ivy had faced 45 to 65 years on a murder charge, which will be dismissed along with neglect of a dependent and aggravated battery charges if the judge accepts the agreement.
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