Sarasota infant died from two blows to head, police say. Mother charged with murder
A Sarasota woman has been arrested on a murder charge after doctors found multiple “blunt impacts to the head” of her 14-week-old son, according to an investigation by the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office.
It was not first time that Dominic George Scheip had broken bones during his short life. An autopsy uncovered a prior injury to his skull and hospital records show that fracture in both of his legs when he was 28 days old.
The boy’s mother, Lily Scheip, was arrested on Tuesday after detectives obtained a warrant charging her with second-degree murder. She is being held at the Sarasota County jail on a $350,000 bond. Should she post bond, Scheip has been ordered to wear a GPS ankle monitor, according to court records.
Scheip is a licensed practical nurse at The Glenridge on Palmer Ranch senior community in Sarasota, which has a assisted living facility and skilled nursing home and rehabilitation.
At about 10 p.m. Nov. 8, 2021, paramedics were called to Scheip’s home in the 2300 block of Spring Oaks Circle in Sarasota after a neighbor called 911 to reported the 14-week-old boy was unresponsive, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Scheip had been home alone with both her children at the time the boy was hurt. Her husband and their father had come home from work for a couple hours before leaving at 7 p.m. that night.
She later told detectives that around 9 p.m. the boy refused to drink his bottle of formula and looked drowsy, so she left him sleeping in his bassinet in her master room and went out to the living room to watch a movie with her older son. Scheip said that when she returned 20 minutes later, he was unresponsive and because she couldn’t find her phone, she ran out with the boy in her arms and shouting for help.
One neighbor told her she should take the boy to another home of another neighbor, who is a nurse, while she called 911. That neighbor performed CPR until paramedics arrived, took over and rushed him to Sarasota Memorial Hospital. They could not see any obvious injuries but described the boy as being unresponsive, limp, warm to the touch, pale and blue around the mouth.
Dominic was airlifted to Tampa General Hospital where doctors discovered he had suffered trauma to the head and was already brain dead.
On Nov. 10, Dominic was taken off life support and died.
Dominic had a dime-sized bruise and a bump on the left side of his forehead when the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office performed an autopsy. But below the boy’s scalp, the medical examiner found a total of three bruises on his forehead and two impacts to the back of his head. Those occipital impacts cause severe injury and bleeding in the boy’s brain.
A older three-inch fracture was also found on the boy’s skull.
Detectives later learned that on Sept. 21 — when Dominic was 28 days old — Scheip took him to the hospital and told staff that he had slipped from a recliner. The boy had suffered a fracture to his right femur bone and a bucket handle fracture to his left femur.
But the fatal blows delivered the back of Dominic’s head on Nov. 8 would have left him unconscious within an hour of the impacts, medical professionals told detectives.
Scheip admitted to being the only one home with the children at the time, according to the probable cause affidavit.
This story was originally published March 16, 2022 at 6:04 PM.
