Infant’s legs seen flailing as daycare worker attempted to smother him, prosecutor says – NJ.com

Citing her lack of any prior criminal record, a judge has ordered the pre-trial release of a childcare worker charged with attempted murder of a 1-year-old she was looking after at a South Jersey daycare.

Maggie Fruit, 21, of Somerdale, was working at Forever Young Child Care Learning Center in Lindenwold on July 15 when she allegedly placed a blanket over the child’s head, laid on top of him with her hands wrapped around the blanket and dropped him on the floor several times.

She is also accused of endangering another child in her care 30 minutes earlier.

Prosecutors say both incidents were caught on surveillance video.

Fruit appeared in court for a detention hearing Friday morning.

The child’s mother, who is employed as a teacher at the daycare, told police she heard her baby crying in the next room and went to investigate. She found him facedown on a mat with his classroom teacher, Fruit, on her knees over top of him with her hand pressing down on his head, according to prosecutors.

The mother entered the room, took her child and reported the alleged incident.

The child was taken to a hospital and released after no injuries were found.

Surveillance video showed the alleged assault occurred over the course of eight minutes before the mother appeared and intervened, according to Camden County Acting Assistant Prosecutor Carla Fabrizi.

While four other kids were lying still on their mats in the room, Fruit wrapped the victim in a blanket, “looking like she’s tying him into the blanket,” throws him several times onto the mat “and on one occasion on the floor,” Fabrizi said.

“She then violently rolls him back and forth while he’s on the mat, appearing to yell in his face.

“On two occasions, it appears that the defendant places all of her body weight on the baby with her hand covering the baby’s nose and mouth,” the prosecutor continued. The child’s legs “are seen flailing as she’s doing this.

“She then checks to see whether he’s still breathing.”

At one point, she gets up, throws a blanket at the child and walks away, according to Fabrizi. She then returns and again slams him onto the mat, gets on her knees and “appears to push the baby’s head down with her hand.”

That’s when the mother arrived.

Fruit appeared upset, seemed aware of her actions and tried to apologize several times to the mother, Fabrizi stated.

An 18-year-old assistant who was in the room at the time told police she became concerned by Fruit’s actions, but was unsure about what to do, since she had only worked there about two weeks.

Fruit was employed there for two months and was “fired immediately,” a daycare owner stated last week.

A spokesperson for the Department of Community Affairs said the state is “pursuing revocation of that child care center’s license. To ensure the safety of children during the pendency of that process and any appeals, the DCF requested and was granted a court order directing the center’s immediate closure.”

The spokesperson declined to comment further on the investigation into this incident.

The child had only been at the daycare for a month and was still adjusting to the environment, the mother told police, and said it would have been acceptable for Fruit to bring the child next door to her classroom if he was being difficult, the prosecutor stated.

In addition to first-degree attempted murder, Fruit was charged with second-degree aggravated assault and third-degree endangering the welfare of a child.

As police reviewed footage of that incident, they discovered an additional case of alleged mistreatment had occurred a half hour earlier involving Fruit and another 1-year-old child.

In that incident, she allegedly carried a boy upside down by his legs.

“She then throws this child onto the mat, folds him into a blanket and also wraps his head in as well,” Fabrizi said. “She takes the blanket, picks it up with the child inside a few inches off the ground and throws it back down onto the mat.”

This victim was found to have a cut to his upper lip and bruising at the top of his forehead after the incident, according to the criminal complaint.

Fruit was charged with third-degree endangering the welfare of a child in that incident.

In arguing for Fruit’s pre-trial detention, Fabrizi described the severity of the alleged crimes involving the co-worker’s child.

“Over eight minutes of this defendant was caught on camera, of her man-handling this child, physically abusing him, throwing him, suffocating him, wrapping him in a blanket and, lastly, putting all of her weight on his head,” Fabrizi said. “But for his mother intervening, this abuse would have continued.”

Fruit could have walked away from the situation and asked for help, but she didn’t choose that path, Fabrizi added.

“Although this defendant does not have a criminal history, she poses a serious risk to the community. Her violence and aggression with two 12-month-old small children is alarming.”

If convicted, she faces 20 years in state prison on the attempted murder charge, making her a flight risk, the prosecutor said.

Defense attorney Charles M. Gibbs presented the court with 59 pages of character references in support of Fruit.

She has significant ties to the community and has been a law-abiding citizen, he said.

“She is not a flight risk. There is no indication that she has someplace else to go.”

Pointing to her strong, local family ties, Gibbs noted that Fruit’s mother and step-father live in Philadelphia and work in law enforcement.

“Your honor, I understand the videos are troubling, but when you look at the letters, they don’t necessarily comport with what we saw in the video,” Gibbs said. “This does not seem like a person who is malicious, but instead a person who had some issue that happened on that day that we want to be able to explore and present a defense at trial.”

While Fruit’s public safety assessment recommended detention, Superior Court Judge Judith Charny wasn’t convinced.

Charny noted that Fruit has no criminal record whatsoever ever and found she could not, under court precedent, keep the defendant jailed based only on the charges in this case.

The judge ordered her release with requirements that she report to court officials weekly by phone and have no contact with the daycare, anyone involved in the case or work in any sort of childcare capacity while the case proceeds.

Fruit, who wore a mask and participated in the virtual hearing from a booth at Camden County’s jail, did not speak during the hearing.

She will return to court Sept. 15 for a pre-indictment hearing.

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Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com.