This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Cottonwood Heights mother Kelsey Singletary was charged Friday with criminal and negligent homicide, a class A misdemeanor, in the drowning of her 7-month-old daughter.
According to court records, the 22-year-old called police to her home at 7106 S. 2870 East on July 19, where police found the baby, Seyena Evers, in the bathroom "unresponsive" near a bucket filled with more than seven inches of water.
The baby was taken to Primary Children's Medical Center where she was put on life support for several days. She never regained neurological function and scans of her brain showed severe damage from lack of oxygen, court records state.
Less than a week later, she was taken off of life support and declared dead.
Singletary told officers she stepped away from the bathroom for only a minute to call her cousin, acknowledging that she was gone for as long as eight minutes, police records said.
"I shouldn't have been on the phone," she said according to court records. 'That's a long time to leave a baby alone in a bathtub."
Police later discovered phone records that show the call with her cousin went on for more than 16 minutes.
Utah Medical Examiner Ed Leis said the infant was underwater for a minimum of 4 to 5 minutes to cause the level of brain damage she had suffered, according to police records. In the same report, another doctor, Susan Bratton of the Pediatrics Intensive Care Unit at Primary Children's, said the level of damage was caused from up to 10 minutes without oxygen.
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