Prosecutor: More investigation needed in baby battery case

MUNCIE, Ind. – A week after her arrest on charges she abused and neglected her six-month-old son, a Muncie mother was released from the Delaware County jail on Thursday.

Mikayla Ann England, 24, had been preliminarily charged with aggravated battery and two counts of neglect of a dependent.

“I don’t believe anyone should assume just because charges weren’t filed right away that they won’t be,” Delaware County Prosecutor Eric Hoffman said Thursday. “We want to take our time with this case and make sure everything’s done right.”

England was arrested April 11, a day after Muncie police were notified her infant son had been taken to IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital  with “possible head trauma.” The child was later transferred to Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, where he underwent emergency surgery.

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Physicians at the Indianapolis hospital said the infant had “highly suspicious” symptoms often associated with shaken baby syndrome.

England reportedly told police she had noticed the baby’s head was swelling more than a month earlier, and also said she might have caused his injuries, suggesting she had “blacked out” while holding him.

Hoffman – who declined to discuss specific allegations in the case – said there were “thousands of pages of medical records, and they can be medically complex.”

“It takes a while to evaluate the evidence,” he said.

The baby’s father, Michael Cole Habegger, 21, and the father of Mikayla England’s other two children, 26-year-old Jademan Hawk England, were also arrested on preliminary charges of neglect of a dependent.

Both men have since been released, and formal charges to date have not been filed against them.

Amy Kesler, a city police sergeant, reported the southside apartment where the three adults and three children lived was “filthy with unsanitary conditions for children.”

The two older children, both under the age of five, were “diagnosed with with lice and scabies,” and taken into custody by the Department of Child Services, Kesler wrote.

“To my knowledge, the children are not with these people,” Hoffman said Thursday.

Douglas Walker is a news reporter at The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.com.