The child’s father gave detectives communications from Jessica Vlasac as investigators examined what happened before and after the 3-month-old died.
LAKELAND, Fla. — Hours before deputies arrived at a Lakeland home and found a 3-month-old boy unresponsive, Jessica Vlasac had been communicating with the infant’s father. Later that night, investigators say, she sent messages stating that she had killed the child. Those communications would become one part of a broader investigation that also included an autopsy, a distinctive forehead injury and a large ring detectives seized from Vlasac.
The messages offer investigators a timeline extending beyond the moment emergency crews were summoned shortly before midnight on Sept. 6. According to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, the infant’s father showed detectives communications indicating that Vlasac had purchased alcoholic shots around noon. Authorities said she later sent multiple messages saying that the baby was dead and that she had killed him, and investigators found that some messages had been deleted. Days afterward, the father said Vlasac asked him not to share their communications with detectives. The sheriff’s office has not released the full message thread, leaving the exact wording and context of most of the exchange outside public view.
The father’s account began earlier in the day. He told investigators that Vlasac becomes violent when she drinks alcohol, according to the sheriff’s office. That statement is the father’s characterization and has not been presented publicly as an independently established fact. Authorities did not say how much alcohol Vlasac allegedly consumed, whether toxicology testing was performed on her or what role, if any, prosecutors believe alcohol played in the child’s death. What investigators did say is that the purchase and later messages were among the digital evidence they considered while trying to determine what happened inside the home.
At about 11:58 p.m., deputies responded to the house after receiving a report that the infant was unresponsive. He was taken to Orlando Health Medical in Lakeland, where he was pronounced dead shortly afterward, according to authorities. Deputies and medical personnel observed bruising and an abrasion on his head. Vlasac told investigators she had accidentally fallen asleep in bed with him and did not remember what happened after that. When she awoke, she said, the baby was face down on the bed, cold and not moving. She also made a statement to deputies indicating that she thought she had killed her son.
At that stage, the account Vlasac gave centered on sleep. The medical evidence soon moved the investigation in a different direction. Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Nelson found subdural hemorrhaging and three separate impact injuries to the child’s head during the autopsy, the sheriff’s office said. One of those injuries, located on the forehead, was an L-shaped mark measuring about 1.7 centimeters by 1 centimeter. Nelson told investigators that its shape appeared consistent with contact from a square-like object. The multiple impacts, according to authorities, did not fit the explanation that co-sleeping had caused the death.
Detectives conducting a subsequent interview noticed something on Vlasac herself that appeared relevant to that finding. She was wearing a ring with a large diamond-like stone whose shape resembled the square-type object described by Nelson, authorities said. Investigators obtained a search warrant covering the ring and Vlasac’s electronic devices. During the seizure, the sheriff’s office said, Vlasac asked whether the ring was what killed the infant. Investigators later gave the ring to Nelson for comparison. He advised them that injuries on the child were consistent with having been caused when he was struck by it, according to the agency.
The significance of that comparison went beyond identifying a possible object. The medical examiner also told investigators there was no evidence that co-sleeping caused the death, the sheriff’s office said. That conclusion placed the autopsy findings in direct tension with Vlasac’s first account. Authorities have not publicly released the complete medical examiner’s report, photographs used in the comparison or the detailed forensic methodology behind the conclusion. They also have not described precisely how investigators believe the three impacts were inflicted. The public account therefore establishes the basis for the arrest allegation without providing every piece of evidence that could later be presented or challenged in court.
People elsewhere in the house supplied another part of the timeline but could not tell detectives what occurred inside the bedroom. They said Vlasac was alone with the infant in the room and that they believed the two were sleeping, according to authorities. Household members reported noticing nothing suspicious until they heard her screaming. The sheriff’s office has not identified those witnesses publicly or said that any of them saw the baby being injured. Their accounts are significant mainly because they describe the setting surrounding the emergency call while leaving the central event unwitnessed, at least based on the information investigators have released.
The infant’s father provided information from after the death as well. He told detectives that Vlasac called him several days later and appeared unusually normal while they discussed the child, the sheriff’s office said. More importantly to the investigation, he said she asked him not to show detectives their messages. A person’s tone during a conversation is subjective, and authorities have not treated the father’s impression by itself as proof of what happened. His claim about the request to withhold messages, however, became part of a body of evidence that detectives described alongside the autopsy, the seized ring, deleted communications and Vlasac’s statements.
That combination illustrates how the investigation developed through different forms of information rather than through a publicly identified eyewitness. Digital communications documented statements before or around the time of the death. The autopsy supplied evidence of multiple impacts. The ring offered investigators a physical object for comparison with a distinctive injury. Household members described what they did and did not observe. Vlasac’s explanation supplied an account that the medical examiner later said was inconsistent with the cause of the injuries. None of those elements alone, based on what has been made public, represents a complete reconstruction of the final hours of the infant’s life.
Deputies arrested Vlasac on Sept. 10. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office said she was charged with aggravated child abuse, a first-degree felony, in connection with the baby’s death. Other reports citing jail records listed allegations of resisting an officer with violence and battery on an officer, firefighter or emergency medical worker, though the sheriff’s narrative about the infant investigation did not explain those counts. The arrest established probable cause for criminal accusations; it did not establish guilt. Authorities have not publicly announced a conviction or otherwise demonstrated through the material reviewed for this report that the abuse allegation has been adjudicated.
When the sheriff’s office announced the arrest Sept. 11, it said the investigation was continuing. Initial reporting identified later court dates, including an October arraignment, but the publicly available sources reviewed here did not provide a reliable account of the result of that proceeding or a final disposition by Oct. 21. The infant remains publicly unidentified. Investigators also have not released a motive, a full toxicology picture or the complete contents of the recovered communications. For now, the case publicly described by authorities remains built around a sequence of statements and messages whose significance increased after the medical examiner concluded that the child’s injuries came from repeated impacts rather than co-sleeping.
Author note: Last updated Oct. 21, 2026.