A 24-year-old soldier is accused of fatally shaking his newborn son at his home on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
Antonius Meyers was initially arrested in April on assault charges and has remained in custody since. In a statement this week, the Alaska Department of Law announced he had been indicted on murder and manslaughter charges.
On April 3, Meyers brought his 28-day-old son to the JBER emergency room because he was unresponsive, according to a criminal complaint written by Anchorage police detective Mindy Mitchell. The baby was transferred to Providence Alaska Medical Center and had continuous seizures overnight, the complaint said.
Doctors discovered the baby had a brain injury and also was bruised on his chest and had injuries to his tongue, according to the complaint.
Detectives interviewed Meyers and his wife. Meyers initially told them he’d fallen asleep on the couch with the baby after feeding him early in the morning, but when they woke after 8 a.m. the baby was unresponsive, the complaint said.
During another interview, Meyers told detectives he shook the baby and had likely caused the brain injury, according to the complaint. He said he’d never hurt the baby before and was trying to fix things, but that he’d “just had one hiccup and I panicked,” according to the complaint.
The infant was placed in a medically induced coma three days after he arrived at the hospital because of the continuous seizures, the complaint said. He died May 15, according to Department of Law spokesman Sam Curtis.
Meyers was arrested April 13 when he violated a protective order and he was charged with assault the next day, according to the complaint. He was indicted June 19 by an Anchorage grand jury on two counts of second-degree murder, manslaughter and five felony assault charges.
Meyers is being held at the Anchorage Correctional Complex on a $25,000 bail. His attorney did not immediately respond to a message on Tuesday.
Meyers is a member of the U.S. Army, the complaint said.