DENVER – Officials have identified the 7-month-old boy who was brought to a hospital after his mother told a friend or family member the baby had a demon inside him and that it had been dead for several hours.
Messiah Dailey was taken to Rose Medical Center early Tuesday morning where he was pronounced dead at around 3:45 a.m., according to the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner.
The boy’s cause and manner of death is pending further investigation.
Cintrease Dailey, 21, was booked Tuesday morning for investigation of child abuse resulting in death.
An arrest affidavit states police had been called to the woman’s home a day earlier or a welfare check after someone reported that she was “blowing breath into her baby,” but officers were unable to find her or the boy at the time.
Sometime later that night, Dailey talked to family members and eventually ended up bringing the baby to the home of the friend or family member – the probable cause statement does not make clear how the person is related to Dailey – after telling them over the phone the baby was dead.
The person told police that Dailey had called on Monday night “and told her the baby’s soul wasn’t in his body and there was a demon in him,” the probable cause reads.
Once Dailey arrived, she took the boy out of the car seat and blew into his mouth while cradling him, “saying she was blowing the evil spirits out,” the affidavit states.
The friend or family member then told Dailey the boy was dead and drove them to the hospital.
She told police that she believed Dailey had used drugs in the past one or two days, and detectives later learned that Dailey had posted several videos on Facebook a week before the baby’s death “saying she needed to cast the ‘demons’ out and the dog was possessed by evil,” arresting documents show.
Detectives said they “observed injuries of various parts of the child’s body that did not appear to be consistent with CPR or resuscitative efforts,” according to the affidavit.