15-Month-Old Girl Found Dead In Dewey Identified

Dewey Police are working with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation as they look for answers in the death Friday afternoon of a 15-month-old girl.  

Police say Emma Beth Warmberodt was already dead when paramedics arrived at her home.

The state Medical Examiner's Office has ruled the baby's death a homicide.  The ME says Warmberodt had trauma to the chest and multiple bruises to her head.

Dewey Police were called to a home in the 300 block of Cherokee at about 2:30 p.m. Officers found Emma Beth Warmberodt on the porch with no pulse.

"This guy was pumping like he was doing CPR and we couldn't see who it was. And then someone moved and we saw a little baby's leg moving up and down," neighbor Jerry Gehle said.

Gehle watched as Dewey Police and fire crews filled the quiet street. The panic gave way to silence when the girl could not be revived.

"I was thinking, 'Wow.' That's bad. That hit me hard to see a baby like that," Jerry Gehle said.

Cheryl Johnson looked on from next door. Police say an elderly woman and three couples lived at the house. Johnson often saw children playing in the yard but they were toddlers.

"It's one thing to watch it on TV and another thing to look out your front door and it's right there," Cheryl Johnson said. "I wasn't even aware that a baby that young was even in the house."

A law enforcement source told News On 6 that, based on the girl's injuries, she may have suffered three-days-worth of abuse leading up to her death.

That source also says this little girl's welfare came to the attention of DHS and the DA around this time last year, but no charges were filed and the baby was not removed from the home.

"You think you know everything and you know everybody. And you don't really know nothing, Gehle said

Dewey Police Chief Mike Shea says a newborn baby--possibly just two weeks old--was also in the house when the little girl died. He says that baby is now living with relatives.

Neighbors are still in shock that a child could die in such a horrible way, just down the street.

"Not in this neighborhood," Gehle said. "Never."

OSBI agents conducted a crime scene investigation of the home where the child and her parents lived and preformed numerous interviews of those who occupied the home at the time of the her death.

No arrests has been made.