Man charged with beating girl, 3; mom faces endangerment count
A 21-year-old Far East Side man is accused of beating his girlfriend’s daughter so severely that her brain bled, and the 3-year-old’s mother is charged with allowing the abuse to happen.
On Sunday — Mother’s Day — Leeves C. Bennett struck or slammed Keilianna Smoot against something at the family’s apartment at 5986 Lake Club Square, according to the complaint filed against him in Franklin County Municipal Court on Tuesday morning.
Keilianna’s mother, Tiffany Sweitzer, 22, was charged on Thursday with two counts of child endangering for failing to seek medical attention for Keilianna and her 18-month-old sister, Harmonie.
Both girls had visible bruises and broken bones from earlier abuse, according to the criminal complaint against Sweitzer.
She is scheduled to appear in court this morning. Bennett remained in the Franklin County jail after bail was set at $1 million.
Keilianna is expected to survive but will have little or no quality of life, Columbus police homicide Sgt. Steven Little said.
“If she should die in the future, we should be able to charge him” with causing her death, Little said.
Keilianna is in Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where her condition was not being disclosed.
Franklin County Children Services now has custody of both girls. Harmonie, who had a broken leg, bruises and other injuries, has been placed in foster care.
Detectives don’t believe that Sweitzer was home when Keilianna was injured on Sunday morning, Little said. But the other injuries to the two girls occurred earlier, and “She would have had knowledge of it.”
Neither Sweitzer nor Bennett called police. It took a phone call from the girls’ grandmother in Newark in Licking County to get medics and police to the apartment.
Juanita Sweitzer called 911 about 10:30 a.m. on Sunday and told a dispatcher that her “granddaughter’s not opening her eyes.”
Juanita Sweitzer said that Bennett texted her to say the child was unconscious. She explained that he couldn’t dial 911 from the phone he was using.
Reached by phone this week, Juanita Sweitzer declined to speak to a reporter.
After spending six minutes on the phone with Juanita Sweitzer, trying to get the correct address to send medics to, the Columbus dispatcher called Tiffany Sweitzer and asked if she was having problems with her child.
“Um, she’s ... she’s breathing but she is not waking up,” she replied.
The dispatcher asked why Tiffany Sweitzer hadn’t called 911. She replied that she had just returned home from dropping off her mother.
“I was about to take her to the hospital,” she said. “Because she’s breathing — she’s just not waking up. She’s snoring.”