6-Month-Old New York Infant Drowns In Bathtub With Running Water After Being Left Unsupervised, Parents Charged

An infant girl drowned in a bathtub after being left unsupervised. The incident took place at a home in Kingston, New York, on Saturday (April 19).

In a statement Sunday, the Kingston Police Department said officers responded to 59 Gill Street around 6 p.m. Saturday for a medical emergency. The police officers were joined by the Kingston Fire Department and Mobile Life Ambulance. The responding officers found a six-month-old child unresponsive and began performing CPR. The girl was rushed to Health Alliance Broadway campus where she died.

“An investigation into the incident revealed that the parents had placed the child into a tub with the water running and the left the child unsupervised in the tub for a substantial amount of time. The parents discovered the unresponsive child in the tub and called 911,” police said in the statement.

Following this, the parents, identified as 29-year-old Jordan E Balcom and 26-year-old Ashante D Inniss, were taken into custody and charged with criminally negligent homicide.

Inniss was additionally charged with criminal contempt and aggravated family offense that “stem from an earlier incident in the day where he is alleged of having violated a no-harass Order of Protection.”

Both of them remained in Kingston Police Department headquarters on Saturday night. The following day, Balcom was released without bail while Inniss was being held on a $5,000 bond.

The Kingston Police Department, the Ulster County District Attorney’s Office and investigators from the Ulster County Child Advocacy Center (CAC) were jointly investigating the incident.

The incident comes less than a month after a Texas woman was charged after her toddler son was found unresponsive in the bathtub. Police responded to a home and found the one-year-old boy unresponsive in the bathtub following which the child was taken to a local hospital. It was revealed that the toddler’s mother, identified as 20-year-old Amayrani Martinez, had left him under the care of an 11-year-old family member who fell asleep while the boy was bathing in the bathtub. When the girl woke up, she found the boy unresponsive in the bathtub. The mother was arrested and charged with injury to a child and child endangerment.