A Jacksonville man has been charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child more than 15 months after his 5-week-old daughter was taken to a hospital in Daytona Beach with injuries that authorities say were caused by shaking and being held with extreme force.
The arrest moved a long-running child death investigation into its court phase after Volusia County deputies said medical and autopsy records, interviews and other evidence pointed to the father, Dajuan Patrick, 27. The case matters now because it turns a 2024 death into an active prosecution, with Patrick jailed without bond and awaiting the next legal steps. It also leaves several important questions open, including what a judge will hear first from prosecutors and how much more of the arrest report and evidence will become public.
The known timeline starts on Dec. 2, 2024, at a home on Carmen Avenue in Daytona Beach. According to the sheriff’s office, Dahlia Siebenhaar was brought to the hospital that night after she was found unresponsive with severe injuries. She never regained consciousness. Ten days later, on Dec. 12, she was taken off life support. Local station WESH, citing the arrest report, said Patrick and the child’s mother called 911 after finding the baby unresponsive, and that investigators later concluded Dahlia had been in Patrick’s care while her mother was lying down because she was not feeling well. The public record does not include a full minute-by-minute account of what happened inside the home before the call for help, but authorities have said the case was investigated from that night forward and remained open for more than a year before the arrest was made.
The medical findings became the backbone of the case. The sheriff’s office said medical and autopsy records showed Dahlia suffered extensive head trauma, broken ribs, bruising across her body and retinal hemorrhages. Volusia County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. James Fulcher later ruled the death a homicide, according to the agency. Deputies said the injuries were consistent with Dahlia having been shaken and held with extreme force. The sheriff’s office has not publicly released a full probable cause affidavit in the material it posted online, but WESH reported that investigators compared Patrick’s statements with the medical evidence and found a mismatch. According to that report, Patrick at first told investigators he did not know why the baby was unresponsive. Months later, WESH said, he changed his account and said he tripped over a duffel bag while holding Dahlia, fell on top of her and noticed her head had hit the floor. The medical examiner, WESH reported, concluded the injuries did not match that explanation.
That gap between the child’s death and the father’s arrest became part of the story itself. Sheriff’s officials said they built the case through interviews, medical records and other evidence, but they did not describe every step publicly. The arrest announcement came on March 11, 2026, when the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said Patrick had been taken into custody the day before in Jacksonville on its warrant. By then, more than 15 months had passed since Dahlia was hospitalized. In many criminal cases, that delay might raise public questions about whether investigators were unsure of what happened. In this case, the sources released so far suggest the opposite. They point to a case that turned on medical review, the homicide ruling and the comparison between injury findings and the father’s changing explanations. Even so, major unknowns remain in the public record, including whether prosecutors will release a fuller narrative in court and whether any other witness testimony will be described in future hearings.
The charge now places the case on a narrower legal track. Patrick faces one count of aggravated manslaughter of a child. The sheriff’s office said he was being held without bond in Jacksonville pending extradition to Volusia County. FOX 35 later reported that Patrick was denied bond on March 13 after prosecutors sought pretrial detention. No plea has been announced publicly, and authorities have not said when he will make his next appearance in Volusia County court. They also have not announced any additional charges or accused anyone else in the child’s death. That means the immediate next steps are procedural ones: moving Patrick into the charging county, holding his first court appearances there and beginning the early stage of a prosecution that is likely to focus heavily on medical evidence, investigator testimony and whatever version of events the defense ultimately puts forward. For now, the public case remains a single-count prosecution built around one infant’s injuries and one father’s alleged responsibility for them.
The official language around the arrest has also shaped how the case is being seen outside court. Sheriff Mike Chitwood framed the arrest less as a final answer than as a late act of recognition for a child who never had a chance to grow up. “The arrest in this case won’t bring Dahlia back or give her the childhood she deserved, but today we’re speaking up for her, because her life mattered,” Chitwood said in the department’s release. Local reporting added a small sense of the neighborhood shock that followed the original emergency response. A neighbor told WESH, “We were just kind of shook,” recalling first responders outside the home in December 2024. Another person interviewed by the station called the case tragic and said no infant should be treated that way. Those reactions do not resolve the legal questions, but they help explain why the arrest drew attention even without a courtroom hearing yet. The death involved a very young child, a long investigation and an allegation that the person charged was the one caring for her at the time.
For all the gravity of the charge, much of the public record is still spare. The sheriff’s office has named the father, identified the child, described the injuries and said its investigation found that Patrick shook and spanked Dahlia, causing her fatal injuries. WESH’s account of the arrest report adds the detail that Patrick first denied knowing what happened and later offered an accident explanation that investigators did not accept. Beyond that, there is still no full public reconstruction of the final hours before Dahlia was hospitalized, no detailed court filing in the publicly cited material laying out every piece of evidence, and no public response from the defense to the allegations. That thin record is common in the period between arrest and the first round of court proceedings, but it leaves the public with a case defined by a few stark points: a baby taken to the hospital on Dec. 2, 2024, a homicide ruling, a March 2026 arrest and a father now jailed as prosecutors prepare to move forward.
As of March 18, Patrick remained jailed without bond after his arrest on the Volusia warrant, and the case had not yet produced a fuller public courtroom account. The next milestone is expected to come when he is brought to Volusia County for further proceedings and prosecutors begin laying out the evidence in court.
Author note: Last updated March 18, 2026.