WVa man, 36, pleads guilty in child death

Accused of deadly abuse of 3-year-old

A West Virginia man has pleaded guilty to felony manslaughter in the death of 3-year-old Rasir Jameir Oliver in Jefferson County in 2020.

Keith Kennedy-McLeod, 36, accepted an Alford plea — which means he maintains his innocence but has accepted a plea bargain — in Jefferson Circuit Court and was sentenced Tuesday to ten years in prison on one count of felony manslaughter in the first degree.

Kennedy-McLeod was accused of abusing Oliver, who died in late 2020 after being hospitalized more than a month earlier with multiple third-degree burns suffered in a bathtub along with blunt force trauma injuries.

According to court records, Kennedy-McLeod admitted in an interview with Jeffersontown Police officials that he shook the child Nov. 23, 2020, and said he was the primary person who bathed the victim. Kennedy-McLeod and Oliver’s mother were dating, but she had told police her son was uninjured when she left him with Kennedy-McLeod.

The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office ruled the death a homicide saying Oliver died as the result of “multiple trauma.”

As part of his plea agreement, Kennedy-McLeod admitted he “abused and thereby caused the death” of Oliver in Jefferson County, according to a news release by the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney of Jefferson County.

“When the lives of our children are cut too short, it has an impact on us all,” Louisville’s Chief Prosecutor, Commonwealth’s Attorney Gerina D. Whethers, said in the release. “We remained committed in seeking justice for all those affected in this tragic case.”