A Florida babysitter has been hit with negligent manslaughter charges and faces arraignment in court after she has been accused of leaving a 10-month-old girl in a hot car for nearly five hours, police say.
According to investigators, Rhonda Jewell left Ariya Paige in a hot SUV in Macclenny, causing the toddler to die from possible heat exhaustion.
Following her death, friends and family held a rally for the victim Saturday at the intersection of Macclenny Avenue and Sixth Street. They now demand justice over the baby’s death.
According to Paige’s parents, their daughter was “a daddy’s girl.”
“She would pull on my chin with the little hair that I have,” Justis Paige, Ariya’s father, told News 4 Jax. “She would pull on it. She would always come up to me. If I was asleep, she would slap me and wake me up. She was a dad’s girl.”
Brooke Paige, Ariya’s mother, also shared that the last video she captured of her recent newborn was of her pulling herself up while attempting to walk for the first time.
“She pulled up on my shirt, grabbed my shirt, and pulled up on me,” Brooke Paige said. “I said, ‘Oh my gosh, Ariya. I think we are almost to your first steps.’”
Paige was their only child.
According to police documents, Jewell left Paige strapped to her car seat while she went inside to tend to other kids at a house. The documents further reveal that the suspect forgot to bring the baby with her.
Paige’s mother says her daughter was left in the car from 8 AM – 1 PM.
“I just don’t want any other babies or any other children to ever experience what Ariya did,” Brooke Paige said. “It hurts. I hate that Ariya had to go through it, and there was nothing I could do.”
During the rally, family members and friends held posters with images of the victim plastered on them. “Justice for Ariya” and “Ariya was Innocent” were some of the phrases written on them.
“I will do everything that I can to get justice for her,” Justis said.
“What keeps me going is I wake up every day and tell myself I have to do this for Ariya,” Brooke Paige said. “I love that we have an army behind us that is making us move every day. It keeps going every day. If it wasn’t for this army behind us, I do not know where Justis and I would be today.”
