Jury finds grandmother guilty of manslaughter in death of her 4-year old grandchild in 2022

A Baton Rouge woman was found guilty of manslaughter Friday in the death of her 4-year-old granddaughter after making the child drink more than half a bottle of Canadian Mist whisky as punishment for stealing a sip.

Roxanne Record, 57, will be sentenced on Aug. 10. She will face no less than 10 years and no more than 40 years in prison without the possibility of probation, according to state statute.

During her closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney Dana Cummings took the empty bottle out of an evidence bag for jurors to see, sniffing the open cap and wincing for effect.

Throughout the trial, Cummings brought attention to the "astronomical" amount of alcohol found in China's body, more than double the amount where ingestion can become lethal for adults.

She placed the child鈥檚 death in Record鈥檚 hands by framing her as a callous grandmother who singled out her preschool-aged granddaughter for the "tough love" punishment.

"Your imagination can only take you to what was happening to China," Cummings said. "Was she begging? Was she crying? Do you know how much alcohol burns when you drink it straight? She's 4."

A question in the case was whether Record had the specific intent to kill her granddaughter, which was required for a first-degree murder conviction.

While the jury wasn't ultimately convinced, Cummings said Record couldn't claim she didn't know her actions would result in China's death because the punishment was administering poison to a preschooler.

"This is akin to handing a child getting in trouble in your house a bottle of Spic and Span sitting on the counter, bleach sitting on the counter, poison, any kind of poison you want to name, handing that child that and saying, 'Here, drink this,鈥�" Cummings said.

Family statements implicated grandmother

When first responders arrived at the home of China鈥檚 mother, Kadjah Record, on April 21, 2022, to perform emergency CPR on the child, one paramedic could be heard in body camera footage asking the mother why she waited so long to call 911.

With China's body lying in the grass outside her mother's Wallis Street house and her mother and grandmother standing nearby, another paramedic made the call to cease CPR.

What happened that morning before authorities were called was witnessed only by China's elementary school-aged siblings and her grandmother, Roxanne Record.

"This case wouldn't be solved without those children," Cummings said, referring to interviews with China's then 10-year-old brother and 7-year-old sister, which first implicated Roxanne Record in China's death.

The 10-year-old boy said he noticed that a "drink" in the kitchen was lower than it had been the night before, which he reported to his mother, saying China had stolen some.

While neither of the children's statements were completely consistent with each other, both said they had heard their grandmother tell China to drink something that morning.

The boy described the drink as brown, in a flat bottle with a blue top. He said his mother didn't believe China when she said she hadn't sipped any, and made the girl get on her knees.

The 7-year-old said her grandmother then said "here, China" in a mad and sad voice. The girl then pantomimed holding something up to her mouth with both hands.

Murder trial starts for Baton Rouge grandmother accused of making 4-year-old drink herself to death

The 10-year-old said he later saw China unable to keep her balance and lying down, at which point the family became alarmed and tried to wake her by placing her in a shallow, cold bath.

Time passed before her mother took China out of the bath to call 911, seeing that she wasn't breathing and there was brown foam coming out of her mouth, multiple family members said.

The prosecution characterized this delay as China's guardians being uninterested in her health and allowing her to "breathe her last breaths in that bathtub," as BRPD detective Joshua Brogan put it while interviewing Roxanna Record later on.

The defense argued that this was an accident that moved quickly, with China's conditioning worsening while her guardians were distracted, and with them still calling for help as soon as they thought she was in danger.

One other family member, Roxanne's daughter Ebony Record, also testified that Roxanne Record had a specific distaste for China and had said so on multiple occasions.

Both of China's siblings, , now four years older, testified in court. They both disagreed with how they had previously remembered events, with China's sister even saying that China actually didn't even wake up that morning and was carried straight to the bath.

An 鈥榓stronomical鈥� amount of whisky

The fact that China Record died of alcohol poisoning after ingesting a copious amount of whisky was not contested during this trial. Instead, the question being argued was how that amount of alcohol entered China's system.

Both Dr. Yen Van Vo, a forensic pathologist with the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office, and Dr. Carolina Noble, a forensic toxicologist with NMS Labs, testified for the state that the amount of alcohol found in China's blood was 鈥渁stronomical.鈥�

Samples taken from multiple organs during China鈥檚 autopsy and tested at NMS Labs came back with a blood alcohol content of 0.631%.

Both experts testified that blood alcohol levels between 0.3% and 0.4% can be lethal for adults.

The amount of alcohol found in China's blood the day of her death was more than twice that, and nearly eight times as much as would land an adult in jail for impaired driving.

"On top of that, not only does the blood alcohol concentration in this 4-year-old far exceed the level that will be considered lethal, fatal in an adult, but the stomach content tells me that there's still a lot more alcohol that hasn't made it into (China's) person," Vo said.

Vo categorized China's manner of death as a homicide, saying she had ruled out other possibilities. Noble testified that the amount of alcohol still in the girl鈥檚 stomach was so high, she believed there was no way China could have ingested all of it on her own.

But defense attorney Caitlin Fowlkes pressed both experts on how either could make a determination regarding how the alcohol entered China's body, rather than testifying only that it was ingested.

At one point during Noble's testimony, Fowlkes objected to a question from Cummings that included the phrase "poured down China's throat," which Fowlkes saw as prejudicing the jury.

She moved for a mistrial, which Judge Carson Marcantel denied.

The defense did succeed in keeping Record from being given a first-degree murder conviction, saving her from spending the rest of her life behind bars.

The larger story Fowlkes and her co-counsel Ashley Deschamp told was of a tragic accident, and a grandmother who told detectives she "took full responsibility" for the death in order to protect her adult daughter.

The defense injected possible doubt into multiple parts of the state's case, including that China was tall enough to reach onto the kitchen counter herself, that no one saw Roxanne Record pouring the liquor down China's throat, and that she brought the empty bottle to detective's attention on her own.

"That's what they've proven to you, they have a toxicologist and a pathologist tell you there's a lot of alcohol in a little body. That's right, she died of alcohol poisoning. That's what they've proven, but they can't make that connection to this woman, to her grandma," Deschamp said in her closing arguments. "The only puzzle piece that matters is how that alcohol got in her system, and they cannot answer that."

Kadjah Record is charged with first-degree murder and cruelty to juveniles in China's death. Her next court appearance is set for June 29.

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