Rogers : Man beat, killed baby, police say
Posted on Friday, March 3, 2006
ROGERS — A Missouri man was arrested in Rogers on Wednesday in the beating death of his girlfriend’s 15-month-old daughter in an Oklahoma motel room after an argument over drugs, police said.
Travis Gerald Steed, 30, of Goodman, Mo., has been charged with first-degree murder in the Feb. 26 death of McKenna Jayde White, said detective Todd Hicks of the Miami, Okla., police department.
McKenna was found dead in her playpen Sunday morning at a motel in Miami where Steed and the child’s mother, Catherine White, were staying. White had left McKenna with Steed on Saturday while she went to Missouri to pick up her other children.
The preliminary autopsy report showed McKenna died from blunt force trauma to the head, Hicks said.
He said a coffee table from the room was taken in as evidence, but it hasn’t been determined to be related to the cause of death.
Steed was being held in the Benton County jail Thursday awaiting extradition.
Steed, a construction worker, had been living at the Miami motel for two weeks, Hicks said. White and McKenna, the youngest of her four children, came to visit Steed on Feb. 22.
White left McKenna with Steed on Saturday and went to her parents’ Missouri home to pick up her older children, ages 7, 6 and 4, Hicks said.
“She gets to her mother’s house and visits awhile,” Hicks said. “Then Travis starts calling and telling her to come on back. He tells her he wants to do meth and she tells him that [he’s ] not having meth around [her ] kids. At this point he becomes angry.” Steed called White 15 times on her cell phone that evening, Hicks said. The last call between the two of them took place about 20 minutes before she returned to the motel, he said.
“In every phone call, [White said ] she could hear McKenna fussing and crying in the background,” Hicks said. “She just thought he had left her in the playpen all day.” White told police that Steed confronted her when she and the children returned to the motel late Saturday night. The couple argued a few minutes before White went to check on McKenna, who was lying in her playpen on her stomach.
She checked the child’s diaper and listened to her breathing before getting the other children to sleep, Hicks said. Police believe the child was injured before White arrived at the motel, Hicks said.
“I believe she was dying [when her mother checked on her ],” Hicks said. “She said McKenna’s breathing wasn’t normal. It was sharp, deep breaths, but she thought McKenna had cried herself to sleep. It was normal for the child to sleep on her stomach so she didn’t think anything of it.” White told police she looked in on the child at least one other time during the night, but didn’t become concerned until the other children woke up and started playing. “When McKenna didn’t wake up when the others were playing loud, she went to check on her and found her dead,” Hicks said. Steed was at the motel when police arrived, but he wasn’t arrested at the time. He left to go to his father’s home, where he was arrested Wednesday evening, Cpl. Kelley Cradduck said. White is not expected to be charged in the case, Hicks said. Steed, who lived on and off in Rogers, had prior arrests on drug, weapons and theft charges, Hicks said.
To contact this reporter: scrawford@arkansasonline. com
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