A father has been arrested for allegedly choking his two-month-old daughter to death by stuffing a baby wipe down her throat to muffle her cries.
Joseph Napier, 30, was taken into custody more than two years after his daughter, Iris Noelle Napier, was found unresponsive at his home in Vero Beach, Florida, according to the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office on Monday.
Napier allegedly yelled, ‘Why can’t you shut the f*** up?!’
Deputies responded to a report of an unresponsive baby at the home on the 1500 block of 6th Avenue in May 2021. Napier was the one who made the 911 call.
First responders performed CPR on the infant as she was ‘turning blue’, according to the sheriff’s office. She was rushed in an ambulance to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Napier initially told deputies that he ‘could only see a small white object in the back of her mouth’ and that she choked.
He then said that he left Iris with his 18-month-old daughter for roughly 10 minutes, effectively blaming the older child.
Napier apparently found Iris choking but waited five minutes before dialing 911, investigators said.
‘He knew he was the cause of this. He was getting his story together,’ said Flowers. ‘He put that wipe in kid’s mouth to shut him up.’
A baby wipe was found deep in Iris’ throat as she was examined.
Authorities determined that Napier was the only person at the home at the time who could have stuffed the wipe so far down the infant’s throat. They also found that he left the children alone for half an hour, not 10 minutes as he said.
We’ve proven that that’s not possible,’ stated Sheriff Eric Flowers of the father’s story blaming his other daughter.
‘(Napier) put that wipe in that child’s mouth. He pushed it down far enough that this child choked.
‘It took doctors going deep into this child’s throat with forceps (to remove it).’
Iris died of an airway obstruction.
Flowers has been charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child on Friday. There was not enough evidence to show that he planned to kill Iris and charge him with a homicide, Flowers said.
‘He knew, or should have known, that that would cause harm to this child,’ Flowers said. ‘His neglect of these children absolutely caused the death in this case.’
He is being held at the Indian River County Jail on a $750,000 bond.
Napier’s arraignment has been scheduled for October 19.
