Joshua Manns West Melbourne Florida babysitter charged in Jameson Nance 3 year old boy’s beating murder. History of ongoing abuse.
A Florida babysitter has been charged with neglecting, abusing and killing a three-year-old boy in his care, after he left the boy’s mother a note saying he accidentally drowned in the bathtub – this despite an autopsy later revealing the toddler haven died as a result of egregious injuries he suffered after having been beaten.
Joshua Andrew Manns, 25, reportedly called 3-year-old Jameson Nance‘s mother on June 11, while she was at work, and told her the boy had drowned in the bathtub. But when she got back to her apartment in West Melbourne, she found Manns nowhere to be found along with never having called for medical assistance.
Instead, authorities say, Manns left her a handwritten note saying the boy had a seizure while the infant was in the tub, resulting in Jameson drowning.
Wrote the man in a letter: ‘no one would believe him and he did not want to spend his life in prison for something he did not do.’
The medical examiner, though, did not find any evidence that the young boy had drowned, saying he actually suffered from battered-child syndrome, suffering from weeks-old injuries, including a broken rib, stab wounds to the head and brain swelling.
Suspicious ongoing injuries
Jameson had also suffered a broken leg last March, with the Florida Department of Children and Family Services having previously investigated the boy incurring a broken leg when he was just 1-year-old, according to WESH.
Shortly before he died, the department had gone to the 3 year old’s daycare to investigate ‘suspicious injuries,’ including burn marks on his arm.
Manns who was not the boy’s father, lived in the same apartment building as Nance and his mother according to authorities. Not immediately clear is how the mother continued to hire Manns as the boy’s babysitter despite an ongoing slew of unexplained injuries.
Manns is reported to have left the Grand Oaks at the Lake Apartments shortly after his phone call with Nance’s mother, with the man gone by the time police arrived.
West Melbourne police sought the public’s help in locating Manns, describing him as a person of interest in the case.
More than two weeks later, on June 28, Manns was arrested by United States Marshalls in Georgia, according to Space Coast Daily as he sought to escape with the help of his family to get back to his home state of West Virginia.
Manns was arraigned on Friday, with a Florida judge charging him with first-degree murder as well as neglect and abuse charges, ClickOrlando reported.
Manns is now being held without bond as a fugitive.
