A Springfield woman was arrested and booked into the Greene County jail May 6, accused of using methamphetamine for several days, falling asleep on top of a baby and causing the death of that child.
Danielle Nikkita Creech, 30, is charged with first-degree endangering the welfare of a child causing the death of the child. Under Missouri law, it’s a Class A felony punishable on conviction by a minimum of 10 years in prison.
According to a probable cause statement, officers with the Springfield Police Department responded to a home in Springfield on April 18 for a report of a dead infant. Upon arrival, officers found the infant “deceased and beyond help.”
A witness told officers Creech was using methamphetamine over three or four days leading up to April 18, and described her as “tweaky” and acting like a “tweaker.” Another witness told officers he knew Creech to be a meth user for a long time and that she used to smoke it but started injecting it.
An officer spoke to Creech at the scene. According to the statement, Creech told the officer that the baby had been born with methamphetamine in her system.
Creech said she had concerns for the baby’s safety when Creech was using methamphetamine, but Creech still chose to use the drug, the officer wrote.
According to the statement, Creech told the officer she took a short nap on April 17, which was the first time sleeping since April 14. She told the officer she knew she was going to “crash” after using meth for four days and not sleeping for three days in a row.
According to the probable cause statement, Creech said she was exhausted on the night of April 17 and that she sat on the side of the bed, holding and feeding the baby from a bottle.
“She said the next thing she remembered she woke up the next morning on her bed,” the officer wrote. “She looked around the room trying to find Victim1, and eventually realized she had been sleeping on top of Victim1.”
“Danielle said, ‘I can’t believe I f**king did that. … I killed her. It’s my fault,’” the officer wrote. “She said, ‘If I wasn’t high these last couple days, I wouldn’t have been so G*d d**m tired. And I would have known. I would have know to put her up, put her on her bed, put her on her thing, and let her go to sleep.’”
Preliminary autopsy reports are “consistent” with Creech’s statement, the officer wrote.
