North Texas babysitter found guilty in murder of 1-year-old Fort Worth girl
A North Texas babysitter has been sentenced to 23 years in prison after a jury found her guilty of the murder of a 1-year-old girl who was in her care.
Tarrant County prosecutors argued that Shanay Franklin caused the death of 14-month-old Journee Clark in February 2021 by hitting the child or slamming her against an object or surface, according to an indictment.
Jurors in Tarrant County 371st District Court also convicted Franklin, 32, on a felony charge of injury to a child, for which she was sentenced to 20 years, according to court records.
A Fort Worth police Crimes Against Children detective was called on Feb. 12, 2021, to Cook Children’s Medical Center, where the victim was being treated for bleeding in her brain that hospital staff believed was caused by abuse, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
The girl’s mother told police that Journee was in the care of a babysitter, Franklin, when she was injured.
Franklin called the mother and said the child had fallen out of a car seat and hit her head on the driveway at the babysitter’s home, according to the warrant. But doctors told police that the girl’s injuries could not have been caused by a 3-foot fall onto her head.
A MedStar ambulance took the child to the hospital, where she died two days later. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled her death a homicide caused by blunt force trauma to the head.
