Inset: Jimmie Jane Grantham (Virginia Beach County Jail). Background: The Virginia Beach daycare center where Grantham allegedly abused an infant (Google Maps).
A Virginia woman appeared in court this week after allegedly abusing an infant out of frustration and fracturing the child’s shin.
Jimmie Jane Grantham, 63, is charged with felony child abuse or neglect in connection with the spring incident involving a boy who was then 10 months old.
The alleged abuse occurred in early March at Just for Kids Preschool and Childcare Center on Lynnhaven Road in Virginia Beach, according to law enforcement officials.
The boy’s mother said she dropped him off that morning as a “happy and healthy infant,” according to an earlier report from Portsmouth NBC affiliate WAVY.
Later, someone at the daycare called the mother to report concerns that the child may have injured his foot, according to the family’s legal team. The boy was taken to Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in nearby Norfolk, where doctors determined that he had fractured his shin, or tibia.
Following the diagnosis, the mother said she was given several conflicting accounts of how the injury occurred. Police were contacted, and Grantham was arrested in May after an investigation.
Prosecutors detailed the alleged abuse in court filings and during a preliminary hearing this week, Hampton ABC affiliate WVEC and WAVY reported.
“Cameras in the room captured Grantham taking care of four infants, one being [the victim],” a criminal complaint states. “He was seen on the cameras in the morning crawling and constantly pulling himself up into a standing position using shelves and bouncers. He was not crying or fussy during this time.”
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That afternoon, police said, Grantham placed the infant in a highchair and tried to feed him a bottle.
“She appeared to be frustrated that he wasn’t drinking from the bottle and that he was kicking the high chair,” the complaint states. “At one point, she hit him in the face with the bottle. A little later, she stated that she saw his shoe was falling off his left foot, so she went over and twisted and pushed the shoe back on.”
According to the charging document, the child let out a “sharp scream” and “didn’t touch his bottle after.”
Grantham then picked up the baby and held him while sitting down, the complaint says.
“She attempted to put his shoe back on his left foot and he was heard crying the whole time,” the document continues. “After this, for the rest of the day, [the victim] was seen only sitting and slowly crawling. The few times he tried to stand, he would fall back down and would start to cry.”
A hospital doctor later told investigators that Grantham’s actions could plausibly have caused the child’s injury, according to the charging document.
“No parent dropping their child off at daycare in the morning should have to deal with getting a call that they’ve been hurt and find out that they’ve had a bone broken at the hands of a staff member,” Bailey Gifford, an attorney for the child’s family, told WAVY. “The factual allegations that the Commonwealth’s Attorney listed in their criminal complaint are incredibly disturbing.”
Grantham is scheduled to return to court in February 2027.
The post Daycare worker frustrated with infant allegedly hit highchair-bound boy in the face with a bottle before he suffered a fractured shin, police say, first appeared on Law & Crime.
