CALGARY – A Calgary dayhome owner accused in the 2012 death of a toddler pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Monday.
Caitlin Jarosz was originally charged with second-degree murder after Mackenzy Woolfsmith’s lifeless body was found in her private MacKenzie Towne day home on May 2.
Jarosz told emergency responders that Woolfsmith had fallen down two steps of carpeted stairs and flipped in the air. She was rushed to the Alberta Children’s Hospital suffering from brain and spinal cord injuries but died the next day.
After consulting with the medical examiner and other experts, investigators determined Woolfsmith actually died as a result of multiple blunt force trauma.
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According to an agreed statement of facts heard in court, Jarosz was the only adult in the home at the time. She was arrested in July 2013.
“She was remorseful the first day I met her and she came into my office,” said Jarosz’s defence attorney Alain Hepner on Monday. “It’s tough, I mean this is a young girl, no record, running a day home. It’s very difficult. She’s an ordinary girl with no past history at all in the courts so it’s very difficult.”
Jarosz’s murder trial, which began on Monday, was scheduled to last two weeks.
She is set to be sentenced in the spring of 2016.
– With files Carolyn Kury de Castillo
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