Florida woman pleads guilty in death of man she injured as a baby

A woman pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Wednesday in the death of a 35-year-old man resulting from injuries he sustained as a baby in her care decades ago.

Benjamin Dowling was five months old in 1984 when Terry McKirchy, who was babysitting him at her Fort Lauderdale home, allegedly shook the baby in desperation. The resulting brain hemorrhage forced Dowling to live in a wheelchair with severe mental and physical disabilities until his death in 2019. He could not feed, speak or eat on his own.

An autopsy revealed that these long-ago injuries were the cause of death, leading to a charge of first-degree murder against McKirchy, now 62, in 2021.

She was free on $100,000 bail but turned herself into the Broward County Jail on May 29 of this year and faced a life sentence. On Wednesday, she was sentenced to three years in prison plus 10 years probation.

Benjamin Dowling was born on January 13, 1984, the first child of Rae and Joe Dowling. They hired family friend McKirchy, then 22, to care for him at their Fort Lauderdale home.

On July 3, 1984, Rae Dowling picked up her son and found him limp, his fists blue and clenched. She took him to the hospital and learned that he had suffered a brain hemorrhage caused by violent shaking.

McKirchy told her the boy had fallen off the couch, the Miami Herald reported.

Days later, McKirchy was arrested. In 1985, she pleaded guilty to attempted murder. At the time, she was six months pregnant with her third child and faced 12 to 17 years in prison. She was sentenced to weekend detention until the child was born and then released on probation for three years.

She said at the time that she was innocent and only accepted the deal to put the case behind her because she had children of her own.

On Wednesday, she finally came clean as part of her plea agreement. Her lawyer read a letter in which she detailed how she was “extremely overwhelmed and exhausted” from caring for several crying children at once and that she had shaken the baby “out of impulse and anger.”

For the grieving parents, the revelation was bittersweet, for their son had been robbed of the life he could have had without the injury, and then he lost his life as well.

“Benjamin was severely disabled for 35 years because of what Terry McKirchy did to him,” Rae Dowling said, according to the Miami Herald. “And all because of one person's lack of control over his actions one day in July 1984.”

With News Wire Services