The suspect, 30-year-old Joshua A. Mize, is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday morning in Miami County Municipal Court on one count of murder.
He was the boyfriend of Caelyn’s mother and lived at the same residence as Caelyn, her mother and two other children, according to the sheriff’s office.
Mize also is on parole with the Ohio Adult Parole Authority after his release in May from prison. The former New Carlisle resident was convicted of trafficking in cocaine in June 2019 in Clark County Common Pleas Court and was sentenced to 30 months in prison with credit for 188 days in jail, court records show.
Bradford Fire & Rescue crews responded around 6:15 p.m. Monday to the 100 block of East Vine Street on a report of a child not breathing.
The child, later identified as Caelyn, was resuscitated and taken to Upper Valley Medical Center. She later was transferred to Dayton Children’s.
“A criminal investigation was initiated by Miami County Sheriff’s detectives due to doctors concluding that the injuries present on the child were suspected abuse,” the sheriff’s office stated in a release.
Mize was arrested Wednesday morning in Clark County by Clark County Sheriff’s deputies after a brief manhunt when he ran, according to the Miami County Sheriff’s Office. Jail booking records show he was arrested around 9:25 a.m.
The Dayton Daily News obtained two 9-1-1 emergency calls through public records requests. In one 9-1-1 call, the child’s mother said her boyfriend told her the child was not breathing.
“She’s only a year old,” the mother says.
The mother says that the child had a series of health issues including being born at 33 weeks, having an underdeveloped hip on one side and aspiration issues.
The other call was placed by a man who did not identify himself, but told dispatchers that he was with the child, that the child was not breathing and he was performing CPR on her.
The dispatcher asks him what took place before she stopped breathing and he responded “Nothing happened, she has a lot of issues, her mom takes her to the doctor a lot. She has a lot of issues, medical issues.”
He later says that the child started to doze off and fell.
At the end of the three-minute call, the man tells the dispatcher that the baby has started to breathe and move again and that paramedics were on the scene.
About the Authors
