Man Is Charged With Murder After Feeding His Baby Anti-Psychotic Meds For A Month, Cops Say

A Pennsylvania dad, who was the primary caretaker of his 10-month-old daughter, is charged with intentionally murdering the infant by feeding her heavy anti-psychotic drugs for more than a month, investigators say.

Jamal Bailey, 41, told cops he was prescribed to Quetiapine, a drug used to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. An autopsy found that 10-month-old Lynail Bailey died of intoxication from the drug, according to a criminal complaint obtained by Oxygen.com.

Bailey denies ever giving the drug—which should not be administered to anyone under the age of 10, according to the complaint—to his daughter.

Bailey had initially been charged with non-premeditated, third-degree murder for the April 2017 death of his child. But a further review of his Google search history showed that he looked up information about drugs in a child’s system and how long it takes a baby’s body to decompose, according to the complaint.

Prosecutors decided to charge him with first-degree murder in early July.

Bailey had only taken over primary responsibility for the child a couple of months earlier in February 2017, he told police. The mother, he said, had given him custody because she was living in a homeless shelter.

He told police that baby Lynail was not a good sleeper. He also said, the complaint points out, that his Seroquil—the brand name version of Quetiapine—tended to make him sleepy and drowsy. But he denied giving the drug to the infant and gave cops several explanations for how she might have taken it.

The pills could have fallen into her formula bottle while he was mixing it, he told cops, according to the complaint. He also noted that she might have put them in her mouth and that the pills were sometimes spilled throughout the house, the complaint states.

Cops found an open pill bottle next to the infant’s bed. Toxicologists believe baby Lynail had been taking the pills for 30 to 45 days before her death, the complaint says.

Bailey called 911 after finding the baby unresponsive in her bed, cops say. An officer tried to resuscitate the child, but she was already suffering from rigor mortis, according to one official on the scene.

Bailey performed a factory reset on his phone within a couple hours of police leaving the scene, according to the complaint.

Cops got a search warrant for his Google history last May and found he had visited a site which described how long it takes a body to decompose and had searched for the meaning of "malice," as well as “what are the jail time of child abuse (sic.)”

Prosecutors upgraded his charges to first-degree murder because the searches took place, in some cases, several weeks before the baby died, according to the complaint.

[Photo: Chester County District Attorney's Office]