Months after KC baby died with injuries, family wants answers: ‘Why is it taking so long?’
.jpeg "Armoni Carr, pictured at the bottom, lost her son Giovanni in June. Family members said he had severe internal injuries, including brain trauma. Kansas City police continue to investigate and consider it a “suspicious death.”")
Inside a Kansas City intensive care unit four months ago, Giovanni Armon D’Angelo Carr, his tiny body suffering from brain trauma and internal injuries, took his final breath.
Photos taken just before his June 20 death show the 7-month-old boy lying in a hospital bed, tubes and wires covering nearly every inch of his face except his eyes. A worn, stuffed Mickey Mouse, one of his favorite toys, lay at his side.
In the months since, no one has been charged in his death. Authorities have refused to release any autopsy information for the baby boy, whose family called him Gio. And Kansas City police have consistently stopped shy of saying they are investigating a homicide, instead calling the case a suspicious death.
“I’m just so confused,” Armoni Carr, Gio’s mother, told The Star. “I called Saturday and asked her (the detective), like, ‘Was there any other updates in the case?’ She said, “No, we won’t have no other updates. I already talked to everyone I needed to, and I’m just waiting on the neurology report.’
“That kind of frustrated me because you talk to everybody you needed to, but nobody is in jail?”
Carr and her family say it doesn’t make sense to them why the investigation hasn’t progressed further. Kansas City police will only say they’re still awaiting a report from the neuropathologist.
“What’s taking so long?” said Jesseka Walker, Carr’s cousin. “Why is it not a homicide when he did not die on his own? The injuries he had, he couldn’t have done it to himself.
“How could (anyone) do a baby like that? A baby?”
On the evening of June 15, police discovered Carr’s son unresponsive at a home in the 5300 block of Olive Street, where family say his godmother — Carr’s close friend since middle school — was watching him. Carr said an ambulance report later said that first responders found the baby on the floor “wrapped in covers and he was bleeding from his nose.”
He died in a local hospital five days later.
On the day Carr’s son died, a police spokesperson said that “it was determined at the hospital the child had suffered significant physical bodily trauma.”
Carr and other family members say Gio had trauma to his brain and eyes. He had fractured ribs, an injured liver, a lacerated spleen and burns on his foot, according to relatives.
“It just really didn’t make sense to me at all how none of that happened,” Carr, 20, said.
The Star requested a copy of the child’s autopsy report from the Jackson County Medical Examiner’s office, as well as the cause and manner of his death. But authorities remain tight-lipped.
“The case pertaining to the information you requested is still under investigation,” said Marshanna Smith, spokeswoman for Jackson County. “ … Therefore, your request has been denied as no records can be released at this time.”
The boy’s godmother had offered to watch her son, Carr said, because Carr was starting a job at Amazon that night. The woman had been trusted to babysit the infant for short periods of time before, but never alone, Thea Harris, Carr’s aunt, previously has said.
“If I wouldn’t have trusted her, I wouldn’t have even sent him over there,” Carr said. “And he would still be here.”
Waiting on lab results
The ongoing investigation into Gio’s death is the only Kansas City Police Department case currently classified as a suspicious death investigation.
Though relatives have described the extensive injuries the little boy suffered before his death, authorities have not released anything about how or why he may have died.
Carr, though, said “the doctor said it was abuse.”
Under Missouri law, Smith said, “all documents prepared by and in the custody of the Jackson County Medical Examiner’s Office relating to this matter are investigative reports of a law enforcement agency and are thus closed records until the investigation becomes inactive.”
Police have given little detail about that investigation and why it’s been months since any updates have been given.
The department previously declined to share whether detectives had ever encountered a similarly injured infant.
Spleen and rib injuries in young children are often the result of blunt-force trauma, according to the Cleveland Clinic and the National Library of Medicine.
Carr said she initially asked the detective if it would take a long time for charges and the detective said “it shouldn’t take that long,” Carr said. “And now it’s taken longer.”
Police have said it can take time for results to come back. According to the Jackson County Medical Examiner’s Office website, the full results of an autopsy should take 6-8 weeks to release.
“Detectives are working the case and pursuing all leads to ensure a thorough investigation has been completed,” Sgt. Phil DiMartino, a Kansas City Police Department spokesperson, told The Star in June. “Detectives are awaiting lab results still, and unfortunately there is no timeline on when those will return.“
Alayna Gonzalez, another Kansas City Police Department spokesperson, recently added: “Unfortunately, in this instance we do not have a time estimate. I’m sorry. I know that’s not helpful.”
“The department has not received the results from the neuropathologist at this time and until we do this case will remain a suspicious death.”
If Gio’s death is eventually ruled a homicide, he will be at least the fifth young child allegedly killed by a caregiver in Kansas City in the last three years.
Carr said police are still trying to determine when her son was injured.
“I sent pictures,” she said. “I sent videos of the day before of him acting active and all of that. .... (There) was nothing wrong with him.”
When Gio’s godmother picked him up, Carr said her son was sleepy and ready for a nap. She had just fed him.
Not long after, she said, she texted the godmother to see how he was doing.
She said she texted again a bit later and didn’t hear back. Then another set of texts back from the godmother made her worry that her son had been injured.
“What I had got told,” Carr said, “was he was just breathing funny. So when I got to the hospital, it was a different story.”
Mourning a son
In late June, Carr posted on Facebook about her son’s death.
“This is literally my worst nightmare,” she wrote. “I can’t believe that you got took from me son, you didn’t even have the chance to live life.”
The family created a GoFundMe account to help pay for expenses, including Gio’s funeral. By the end of October, friends, family and well-wishers had donated just under $5,800.
“Please please help bring awareness to this awful tragedy,” the post said, “and help Armoni lay her 1 and only son to rest!”
Wrote one person who donated: “I know $5 isn’t a lot… but may baby Giovanni rest in peace and may the mother find peace moving forward.”
About two weeks after his death, Carr posted photos from Gio’s funeral, his small casket in a white horse-drawn carriage.
“It was just one last ride through the city,” Carr said, crying.
.jpeg "IMG_534_fitted (1).jpeg")
Her son, she told The Star, wasn’t yet crawling when he died, but he was pulling himself up. He was teething, Carr said, and was “goofy” and “always smiling.”
“If he was crying, it was because, like, maybe his diaper was a little wet, or he was hungry,” Carr said. “You know, he would never cry, just for no reason, because he had no reason to cry.”
In early September, Carr, along with Walker and other relatives, held a small protest outside the home where first responders found the unresponsive 7-month-old. Both Walker and Carr posted a clip of the protest on Facebook.
A group of relatives held colorful hand-made posters, some with Gio’s name and picture.
“No justice, no peace,” they chanted on the clip. “Justice for Gio.”
The goal, Walker said, was “to draw attention, that this is where it happened.”
“We want to know why nobody is in jail.”
On Saturday, Gio would have turned one.
“It’s hard because he ain’t here,” Carr said of her son. She said she hopes to visit his grave on his birthday.
As Carr continues to struggle through a life without Gio, she said she waits for authorities to put her son’s case to rest.
“Justice for me is someone (being) held accountable,” Carr said. “And they get what they deserve.”
This story was originally published November 1, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
