Nurse practitioner charged with murder in bath-scalding death of 2-year old in Queens

ROSEDALE (WABC) -- A nurse practitioner has been charged with murder in the death of a girl who was scalded while taking a bath in her Queens home last week.

The incident happened last Tuesday inside the home on Memphis Avenue in the Rosedale section.

"When I told her, 'I'm sorry', she squeezed my finger," said Gardite Mondesire, Naomi's grandmother.

Gardite says it was agonizing seeing her helpless granddaughter Naomi with burns over 50 percent of her little body.

Prosecutors said she was scalded with 130-degree water in a bathtub at the hands of the nurse Gardite had hired the day before.

"She called me on the phone and said that she needed something because the baby got burned and she said she was very sorry and she was crying and that's she's very sorry, very sorry," Mondesire said.

The nurse is identified by prosecutors as 54-year-old Oluyemisi Adebayo. She was arrested while trying to leave the country on a flight to Nigeria and was charged Wednesday night with murder.

Little Naomi was alone with the nurse when it happened.

"Turned on the water, and she forget to test the water, and just take the baby, don't even test the water, and put her in the tub in the hot water. She neglected of testing the water and cost my granddaughter's life," Mondesire said.

Naomi was born 25 weeks premature. She had a tracheotomy and required a feeding tube. She was barely 2 years old when she died.

Her mother, Cynthia, was too distraught to speak on camera. But Naomi's father is furious and unforgiving.

"Everybody checks the water before they get in, grown, young, you do it, you do it, I do it, everybody in this room does it," Corey Brock said.

The Queens prosecutor said that Adebayo said she tested the water before she put Naomi in it. Gardite said she hired the nurse through Harry's Nurses Registry of Jamaica, Queens. The firm has not commented.

Detectives from the New York City Police Department's Crime Scene Unit performed water temperature tests on the faucet that Adebayo said was used to fill the baby tub. The tests allegedly revealed that the maximum water temperature for the faucet was 130 degrees and that it took approximately 120 seconds for the temperature to reach the maximum level.