By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post
The parents of a young child killed as a result of child abuse in May 2015 in Hays will both serve a year of probation.
According to court documents, the 4-month-old child of Ahmed Keita and Kassie Day was hospitalized on May 16, 2015, with retinal hemorrhages and bruises on her cheek. The child was pronounced brain dead two days later and died at a Wichita hospital.
The Sedgwick County district coroner performed an autopsy and ruled the death a homicide.
Court documents showed the coroner’s report found bruising, hemorrhaging and damage to the spinal cord.
The case then lay dormant until Ellis County Attorney Robert Anderson convened a grand jury in August 2023.
Fourteen of the 15 members of the grand jury returned an indictment charging both Keita and Day with felony first-degree murder.
During pretrial negotiations, Day told the prosecutor that she believed Keita was responsible for the child’s death and agreed to testify against him.
Day recalled an incident in which she believed that Keita was shaking the baby when she entered the room. Another time, the child was left alone with Keita. When Day returned, she said the child was experiencing unusual behavior. Keita also tried to stop Day from taking the child to the emergency room after the incident.
Finally, according to court documents, when the couple learned of the baby’s death from abuse, Day claimed Keita did not show the same emotions she did.
As a result of her plea agreement, Day agreed to testify against Keita, and she pled no contest to aggravated endangering a child, a level nine person felony and interference with law enforcement — falsely reporting information, a severity level nine nonperson felony on Oct. 24, 2023. A conviction on both charges carries a sentence of presumptive probation.
In May 2024, Keita entered into a plea agreement with the Ellis County Attorney’s office.
He pled to two misdemeanors, including endangerment, a misdemeanor and interference with law enforcement, a misdemeanor.
Both charges were not as serious as the ones that Day pled no contest to.
Keita was sentenced to 12 months unsupervised probation with an underlying sentence of 10 months on May 3, 2024.
Day, according to court documents, was upset with the Keita plea deal and wanted to testify against Keita at trial, “holding him (Keita) accountable for what he had done to their daughter.”
She initially asked for her pleas to be withdrawn and requested that the state drop the charges. When that did not happen, she accepted the same plea agreement that Keita had received, which included misdemeanor charges of endangerment and interference.
The judge in the case accepted Day’s motion to withdraw her initial plea and accepted a guilty plea at a hearing on Aug. 30. Day was sentenced to a year of unsupervised probation with an underlying prison sentence of 10 months.
According to court documents, Day continues to maintain her innocence in the case. She accepted the misdemeanor plea because “she does not want to risk a conviction and a lifetime in prison.”
In documents filed in Ellis County District Court, Attorney Robert Anderson said he believed that Keita was responsible for the child’s death, but the primary investigator in the case believed Day was the responsible party.
Anderson, who did not offer comment on the case, said in court filings, “During the pendency of both cases, the Ellis County Attorney struggled with competing interests.”
"Ultimately, the undersigned counsel could not have in good conscience stood in front of a jury and asked them to find, based upon the evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt, that either or both of these parents were guilty of 'felony murder.'"