BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — More than five years have passed since a Lake Isabella man was arrested in the death of his 9-month-old daughter. On Friday it was determined his trial won’t go forward this month, as scheduled.
Now Michael Ianvan Johnson, 30, won’t stand trial until January at the earliest on charges of murder and assaulting a child, Superior Court records show.
On June 23, 2017, deputies were called to a home on Crestview Avenue to a report of a child not breathing. Seraphim Ould-Johnson was rushed to Kern Valley Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
According to court filings, an autopsy determined the baby died from acute neck compression; there was bruising to her throat and hemorrhaging in her lungs.
Called to sheriff’s headquarters months later for a follow-up interview, Johnson admitted to pushing on the back of Seraphim’s neck, pressing her face into a mattress when she became fussy the morning of her death, the filings say.
He released her and she gasped for breath, Johnson said according to the filings. He left to play a computer game. When he returned, Seraphim wasn’t breathing, he said.
Johnson said he’d become frustrated and angry with the baby, the filings say. Detectives arrested him after completing the interview.
