OCALA, Fla. — A Leesburg woman accused of deliberately hurting her baby boy after a three-day meth and Molly binge in Marion County was sentenced this week to more than four years in state prison, records show.
- Kayla Morgan facing 4 years in prison, 5 years of probation
- Morgan dropped baby boy, who suffered a fractured skull
- Deputies say Morgan took MDMA and methamphetamine
Along with her prison sentence, Kayla Morgan, 24, on Tuesday was also ordered to spend five years of probation after being released from prison.
Morgan pleaded guilty to charges of child neglect with great bodily harm and resisting or obstructing an law-enforcement officer after an incident at County Road 315 and east State Road 40 in Marion County on November 19, 2018.
A person later identified as Morgan was running in and out of traffic while holding an infant and "barking like a dog" at passing vehicles, according to a report.
Several vehicles stopped. A bystander reportedly pointed her out to a deputy.
“I attempted to make contact with her and she began to run away from me,” the deputy said in the report. “The defendant walked in a zig-zag pattern through traffic, from one side of the road to the other. The weather conditions were dark due to the early hours of the morning and extremely dense fog.”
She was also carrying the baby as though she were carrying a “jacket, draped over her right arm, allowing the victim to flail,” the report added.
At one point, she ran from the deputy and “deliberately dropped the victim head-first on the side” of S.R. 40. The deputy and medics jumped into action to give him medical treatment.
The deputy reportedly found her in 8500 block of east S.R. 40.
“I grabbed her by her arm, and she began to resist by pulling away from me,” the deputy wrote in the report. “I told to the defendant ‘get on the ground,’ and she did not comply.”
According to the arrest affidavit, the deputy shocked her with a stun gun twice. Another deputy arrived and helped the officer put her in handcuffs.
Her muscles contracted, and she trembled, the affidavit described.
“The defendant was also making grunting sounds and other abnormal sounds,” the report said.
The deputy took her to a hospital in Ocala, where she became more lucid and gave the deputy her name and other person information.
She said she took Molly — an elicit stimulant with psychoactive properties, also known as MDMA — and methamphetamine for about three days.
She ran from the deputy because she thought the officer was a monster who wanted to “suck her blood."
“The defendant also advised she remembers setting her infant child down while running away from the ‘monsters,’ however she did not realize she dropped him,” the report said.
A nurse said the baby sustained a fractured skull.