An Atlantic City man is accused of beating his 1-year-old daughter in February.

Imodd Brown Dillihay, 29, was arrested last week on a charge of first-degree aggravated manslaughter.

Ayla Brown was found unresponsive Feb. 2, by officers responding to a 911 call to Metropolitan Plaza. She died about a week later, 10 days before her second birthday.

The autopsy revealed extensive injuries to the little girl, including a contusion on the girl’s forehead, abrasions on both sides of her neck and bilateral retinal hemorrhages.

“The type of injuries (Ayla) sustained could only have occurred if she had fallen from a multi-story building, been involved in a high-speed car chase or been subjected to physical abuse,” doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said, according to the affidavit of probable cause obtained by BreakingAC.

Brown Dillihay told police he was watching Ayla and his two older children from Jan. 30 through Feb. 3, at his girlfriend’s apartment, when he was unable to wake his daughter up for her nap.

Despite the little girl not responding to multiple attempts that included snapping his fingers by her ear, and lifting her eyelid and putting his finger on her eye, Brown Dillihay waited hours before having his girlfriend call 911, the affidavit states.

Before he put her down for her nap, Brown Dillihay said he showered Ayla, and believed she was reaching for a toy when she fell on her shoulder.

He said she never cried or lost consciousness, but he noticed a bruise and scratches around he neck, which he told police did not look like “grab marks,” the affidavit states.

Brown Dillihay noted that the girl “fell asleep too fast, which made him nervous and scared.”

That was around 2:30 p.m.

Ayla was “liked knocked out,” he said.

He called the girl’s mother between 5:30 and 6 p.m., saying she was still sleeping and drooling a lot. She told him that was normal, he said.

When she dropped Ayla off, the mother told Brown Dillihay that she had a cold and had thrown up, but she had no physical injuries.

Brown Dillihay tried again to wake the girl up around “dinner time,” which is when fingersnapping and touching her eye still did not work.

Ayla’s breathing had now slowed down to a few breaths every 10 seconds, he said.

He searched on his phone for “babies breathing.”

Between 11 and 11:30 p.m. Brown Dillihay had his girlfriend call 911.

The unnamed girlfriend told police she left the home during that day to take her child to the doctor, and that Ayla already was napping when she got home.

Brown Dillihay said the woman was left alone with Ayla for only about 10 minutes, when he took his other two children to their uncle’s home in the city.

Multiple injuries that indicated the child suffered blunt-force injuries over several parts of her body, according to the autopsy.

The child had absent brainstem reflexes, consistent with brain death.

Abrasions on her neck and underlying cervical spinal injury are consistent with injury to the neck that were beyond what would be seen from efforts to resuscitate her, the report states.

She also suffered substantial subdural hemorrhages, brain edema and multidirectional herniation,
spinal hemorrhaging, hemorrhagic injury of the cervical spinal cord and cervical thoracic cord.

The girl’s mother said she FaceTimed with Ayla multiple times throughout the weekend, and there were no visible injuries.

She did say that she had concerns about Ayla returning with bruises on her body after previously staying with Brown Dillihay, but was told it was falling out of her high chair.

A video on Brown Dillihay’s phone taken at 7:19 p.m. Feb. 1 showed the little girl eating and talking with no visible injuries.

Brown Dillihay is in the Atlantic County Justice Facility pending a detention hearing set for Friday.