A Kershaw County jury convicted Jacob Ray Wescott in the 2020 death of a 10-month-old boy known as Baby Jack.
CAMDEN, S.C. — A South Carolina babysitter was sentenced to 33 years in prison after a jury found him guilty in the 2020 death of a 10-month-old boy who prosecutors said suffered severe head and body injuries while in his care.
Jacob Ray Wescott was convicted of homicide by child abuse in Kershaw County, closing a case that began with an emergency call to a home on Pine Grove Road in March 2020. Authorities said the infant, known publicly as Baby Jack, stopped breathing while Wescott was babysitting him. Doctors found a brain bleed and bruises, and medical experts later testified that the injuries matched abusive head trauma rather than an accident. The sentence puts a formal end to the criminal case, but it also returns attention to the child’s death and the years it took to reach a verdict.
The case began on March 9, 2020, when firefighters, sheriff’s deputies and emergency medical workers were sent to Wescott’s residence after a report that a 10-month-old was not breathing. By the time deputies reached the home, first responders were already performing CPR on the boy in or near a vehicle outside the residence. The child was first taken to Kershaw Health and then transferred to Prisma Health Children’s Hospital for more specialized care. In statements later described in local reporting, Wescott told deputies the baby had been fed formula, that the two had fallen asleep, and that the child then began “spazzing out.” He also said the baby started choking. A witness inside the home called 911 after realizing the infant was not breathing, according to the incident account described by local outlets.
Investigators said the medical findings quickly pointed away from an accident. Doctors determined the child had extensive head injuries, including a brain bleed, along with multiple bruises on his body. The boy was taken off life support on March 11, 2020, two days after the emergency call. Authorities said medical experts and a pathologist concluded the injuries were consistent with abusive head trauma, a term that replaced the older phrase “shaken baby syndrome.” That finding became the center of the prosecution. Officials did not publicly lay out a full minute-by-minute account of what happened inside the home before the child stopped breathing, and public summaries of the case did not explain exactly what led investigators to conclude the injuries were intentionally inflicted. They did say Wescott was babysitting the infant at the time and that the trauma was not believed to be accidental.
The case carried weight in Kershaw County from the start because of the victim’s age and the condition in which first responders found him. Sheriff Lee Boan said at the time that his office’s victim advocate had been in contact with the child’s mother and that support would be offered to the family. Local reports from 2020 said two other minors were inside the home watching television when the baby went into distress. A family fundraiser shared after the child’s death said the boy would be cremated and described the mother’s grief in stark terms, saying she should have been planning his first birthday instead of his funeral. Those public details gave the case a human face long before it reached trial. But the formal evidence that mattered in court centered on the medical testimony, the emergency response timeline and the investigators’ conclusion that the injuries could not be explained as a choking episode or some other household accident.
Wescott was arrested in March 2020, the same week the child died, and the criminal case then moved through South Carolina’s court system over several years before trial. A Kershaw County jury convicted him on Feb. 9, 2026, of homicide by child abuse. Circuit Judge Milton G. Kimpson sentenced him to 33 years in the South Carolina Department of Corrections. The Fifth Judicial Circuit Solicitor’s Office later announced the outcome and identified the prosecutors who handled the case as Deputy Solicitors Curtis Pauling and Anna Browder and Assistant Solicitor Michael Bradbury. The office also said Kershaw County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Miles Taylor spearheaded the investigation, with help from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division’s Child Fatality Unit. No new charges were announced after the verdict, and officials did not indicate any pending proceedings beyond the prison sentence. What comes next is the ordinary post-conviction process, which can include filings through the courts, while Wescott begins serving the term imposed by Kimpson.
Even in its final stage, the case remained shaped by a few plain details from the first day: a babysitter, a baby in medical crisis and first responders trying to save him outside a rural county home. Prosecutors kept their public explanation concise after the conviction, saying the child suffered extensive head and body injuries and later died from them. That spare language contrasted with the emotional response that followed the infant’s death in 2020. Boan said then that authorities were focused not only on the investigation but also on helping the boy’s family. Public fundraising appeals echoed that grief, referring to the child simply as Baby Jack and asking for help with funeral costs. The years between the arrest and sentencing did not erase those early images. Instead, the conviction and 33-year prison term brought the case back into view as a long-delayed legal resolution to the death of a child who never reached his first birthday.
For now, the case stands closed at the trial-court level with Wescott convicted and sentenced to 33 years. The next milestone would come only if post-conviction motions or an appeal are filed in the months ahead.