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A Florida mother is accused of staging her daughter's death by drowning to hide her own alleged culpability, according to police.
On Friday morning, the Collier County Sheriff's Office released an official statement on its Facebook page accusing 29-year-old Naples woman Nicole Marie Laber of fabricating an incident involving a dog bowl to make it look like her 8-month-old daughter had drowned accidentally. In truth, authorities now believe Laber left the girl unattended while strapped in a booster seat in the bathtub. The incident took place on June 17, with authorities being called to the scene around 7:40 a.m. local time.
"The infant drowned after the booster seat tipped over and trapped the child under a few inches of water," the sheriff's office's official release explained. "The child was later pronounced dead at a hospital."
The release refers to the child only as "an infant in [Laber's] care," but subsequent reporting from local news station WBBH-TV confirmed that the baby was the suspect's daughter.
The sheriff's office explained that when deputies first arrived on the scene, Laber claimed that she had briefly left the infant alone in the home while she went to retrieve her dog and another older child, who she claimed had run outside. When she came back, she claimed to have found her daughter "slumped over on the floor, face-down, in the dog's water bowl." Further investigation led deputies to the bathtub allegations, accusing Laber of dressing the child in a diaper before calling the authorities.
"This is an absolute tragedy," Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk said in the Facebook post. "But thanks to the dedication and skill of our detectives we now know what actually happened to this innocent baby and justice can be carried out."
Laber is currently being held in custody at the Collier County jail and is charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child. It is unknown when she will appear in court.
Newsweek reached out to the Collier County Sheriff's Office via email for comment.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that accidents are the leading cause of death among children ages 1 to 4, with drowning being one of the most common kinds. Drowning is also the second most common cause of accidental death among children ages 5 to 14, behind car accidents.
In May, a similar tragic incident played out when an infant drowned in a bathtub after being left unattended. The child's mother left a 14-year-old to watch the infant in the bath while she went to prepare dinner, only for the teenager to leave the room and become distracted on a computer. The infant was later found unresponsive as the tub overflowed.
About the writer
Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national ... Read more