Alone with her crying baby, Destiny Chiveral picked up her iPhone to record a video. “This is the baddest she’s been in a while,” the Maryland woman said.
Within hours, 5-week-old Kai’Ella was dead. And after a week-long investigation, authorities charged Chiveral with first-degree murder.
The case unfolding in the small town of Rising Sun, 40 miles northeast of Baltimore, rests on what detectives allege in court filings were 10 videos recorded by Chiveral that showed her becoming more drunk, an autopsy of the infant that revealed a sudden brain injury, and a picture frame knocked askew near where the baby was last seen alive early on the morning of Dec. 4.
Investigators also spoke with a woman who had been asleep in an upstairs bedroom before the baby died. She told them that Chiveral, 24, had come into the bedroom, as if she were sleepwalking, at 1:47 a.m., which investigators said was about 13 minutes after Chiveral had made her final video of the night.
Chiveral on Monday remained held without bond in the Cecil County Detention Center, according to jail officials. She is due in court again on Jan. 9. Her attorney, as listed in court records, did not return messages seeking comment.
The case stunned friends and family members of Chiveral. “I don’t think she could do this,” said one of them, Jaime Casper, whose son previously dated Chiveral. “I am hoping that is the case.”
For police, the investigation began at 9 a.m. on Dec. 4, when Maryland state troopers and local medics responded to a 911 call about an unresponsive infant in a townhouse along Leedle Circle. They found the child dead and her body cold. She “had clearly been deceased for some time,” investigators said in court filings.
Police found three adults in the townhouse, including Chiveral.
She told them that late the night before, her daughter was fine when they went to sleep on a first-floor couch, according to a court affidavit signed by a state police sergeant. Chiveral said the baby was still fine at 3 a.m. when she awoke and changed her diaper before going back to sleep, the affidavit states.
But when she woke up six hours later, Chiveral allegedly told investigators, Kai’Ella had rolled between a couch cushion and the back of the couch. Chiveral said she pulled the baby out, noticed she was not warm, and ran upstairs with her. Chiveral said her friend called 911 and they tried to administer CPR.
While speaking with authorities, Chiveral demonstrated with a doll how Kai’Ella had become wedged in the sofa cushions, according to court filings.
An autopsy found “bleeding in the back of the brain near or at the cerebellum” and a bruise on the forehead. A “significant amount of force” caused the head injuries, doctors concluded.
Investigators brought Chiveral in for more questioning. She asked whether the autopsy was done and was told about the head injuries that “were unexplained by her account of the events,” investigators wrote.
“I swear I never did anything to her. … I would never do that,” Chiveral said, according to court records.
Chiveral said she’d slept some distance from the baby, so she couldn’t have kicked her. She told investigators she sometimes sleepwalks, especially after drinking. “Did I, like, carry her up with me?” she wondered to the investigators, according to court filings. And she spoke about another child of hers — a toddler — who she said was sometimes rough with the baby.
“Nothing I say is going to fix this, is it?” Chiveral asked, according to the documents. “No matter what, I’m going to be blamed for her death, ain’t I?”
Investigators spoke with one of the other occupants of the townhouse. She said that before Chiveral arrived with her baby for an overnight visit on Dec. 3, she had placed a nearly full bottle of vodka in the freezer. The woman said she found the bottle the next morning, nearly empty, on the kitchen table.
Having seized Chiveral’s iPhone, investigators also started combing through short videos recorded the night Kai’Ella died.
At 9:06 p.m., according to one video, Chiveral could be seen drinking from a can of Four Loko, an alcoholic energy drink. In another video, a picture frame near the sofa appeared level — not at the 45 degree angle that first responders saw when they arrived. The court filings do not directly say why investigators found the picture frame clue so important, and officials did not respond to questions about that.
A video recorded just before 1 a.m. showed Chiveral dancing in the kitchen. Thirty minutes later, a video recorded her upstairs trying to negotiate a baby gate. Chiveral can be heard saying she is “too drunk” to open the gate as she climbs over it. A baby can be heard crying in the background.
At 1:34 a.m., Chiveral recorded herself back downstairs, pointing the camera at her crying child on the sofa before turning it back on herself. Speaking between hiccups, Chiveral described her baby as generally calm, according to police. “She’s the chillest baby until she’s mad about something,” she said.
Her friend Casper said she spoke with Chiveral at length over a Facebook video call the night of Dec. 3 and into the early morning of Dec. 4 — from 10:54 p.m. to 12:15 a.m. Casper said the two spoke about kids, men, relationships. “Girl stuff,” Casper recalled.
Throughout their call, Casper said, Kai’Ella slept quietly in the background. Chiveral twice pointed her phone camera at the baby. “The baby was asleep and alive and well,” Casper said.
To Casper, her friend did seem a little buzzed from alcohol but not out of control.
Court documents indicate that investigators believe Chiveral continued drinking into the morning and that the injuries to the baby were inflicted sometime between 1:34 a.m. and 1:47 a.m. — or a little more than an hour after Chiveral and Casper ended their call.
“It’s just hard for me to fathom that after we hung up, she just got angry and flipped out,” Casper said.
She and others spoke warmly of Kai’Ella.
“She was just a gorgeous little baby. She seemed like a very quiet, good baby,” Casper said, reflecting on all that had been lost. “Babies are amazing. They make everything better.”
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