A reported arrest warrant connects accounts from inside a Belle Rose home with medical findings and the accused caregiver’s statement.
BELLE ROSE, La. — The first public reports about the death of a 3-year-old Belle Rose girl contained only the outline of a homicide investigation. A newly reported arrest warrant now shows how detectives brought together three separate sources of evidence: witnesses in the home, the child’s injuries and Bernard JR Fleander’s own alleged statements.
Those three strands do not all answer the same questions. Witnesses described what they said they heard in the house during the early morning hours of Aug. 13. Medical personnel and an autopsy documented the condition of the child after she became unresponsive. Fleander, according to the warrant, gave investigators an account of his actions during a potty-training dispute and the moments after the girl collapsed. Together, those accounts led investigators to charge Fleander, 26, with first-degree murder. They remain allegations and investigative findings, not a verdict. Fleander is presumed innocent unless and until prosecutors prove the charge in court.
The witness accounts are especially important because the original sheriff’s announcement said only that detectives had interviewed people who were present at the Highway 308 residence. The warrant, as reported Sept. 25, says witnesses later described hearing Fleander beat the child. They allegedly heard her screaming and crying and heard sounds they associated with blows. The document also says those witnesses told investigators that Fleander had been verbally aggressive over potty training and had disciplined the girl and her twin sister over the issue before. The available reports do not identify the witnesses by name or provide their complete statements, leaving the public with the portions investigators included in the warrant.
Separate from those accounts is the medical record described by authorities. When the girl arrived at Assumption Community Hospital in Napoleonville shortly after 3:20 a.m., she was unresponsive. Hospital staff attempted to save her but were unsuccessful. Deputies who came to the hospital said they observed significant injuries. WAFB later reported that medical personnel documented major internal bleeding, internal injuries and head injuries. The arrest warrant, according to the Sept. 25 report, described fractures, internal contusions, lacerations and hematomas across much of the child’s body. The full autopsy has not been made public in the sources reviewed for this story.
The third strand is Fleander’s reported interview with detectives. The warrant says he told investigators the episode began after a problem with a diaper and an attempt to have the two 3-year-old girls use the toilet. According to the document, one girl used the bathroom and the other did not. Fleander allegedly said the child who later died then urinated on the floor and on his foot. He described himself as becoming “maxed out,” the warrant says, and acknowledged striking her with footwear. He reportedly said he intended to hit her backside but may have struck other areas because the girl was moving.
The warrant says Fleander then described the child running toward the kitchen. He allegedly told investigators he pushed her at the back of the head before she went limp and fell forward. According to the document, Fleander said the sudden change in her condition frightened him. He did not know whether her head hit anything during the fall, the warrant says. He reportedly picked her up, found her unresponsive and attempted CPR on a couch for several minutes. Fleander then asked another person at the residence for help getting the girl to the hospital because he was unsure whether he was performing CPR correctly.
That alleged sequence is markedly more detailed than the information available immediately after Fleander’s arrest. On Aug. 14, Assumption Parish Sheriff Leland Falcon’s office announced that deputies had been dispatched to the Napoleonville hospital, that the girl had died despite lifesaving attempts and that detectives saw significant injuries. The office said Fleander had brought the child to the hospital, was caring for her and other children and was not her biological father. Detectives searched the Belle Rose residence, interviewed witnesses, waited for forensic findings and eventually obtained an arrest warrant. The girl’s death was classified as homicide after the autopsy.
Public descriptions of Fleander’s place in the household have not been fully consistent. The sheriff’s release stressed that he was not the child’s biological father. Some early reports, including Law&Crime, described him as a babysitter because authorities said he had been caring for the girl and other children. The later warrant reportedly called him the girl’s father. After that document became public, the sheriff’s office told a local reporter that Fleander was not believed to be the biological father of the child or her twin sister but acted as their stepfather. That makes “caregiver” the broadest description supported across the available accounts.
The distinction is worth noting because the victim has remained unidentified in the public materials reviewed here. Authorities have said she was 3, lived in Belle Rose and had a twin sister. They have not released her name in the reports used for this article. The decision leaves the child at the center of the criminal case without adding identifying details that are unnecessary to understand the allegations. It also means the public record offers little information about her life outside the events that brought detectives to the hospital and the Highway 308 home.
After the medical examiner classified the death as a homicide, investigators moved from determining how the girl died to building a criminal case alleging that Fleander was responsible. Louisiana’s first-degree murder statute includes a provision covering a killing committed with specific intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm when the victim is younger than 12. The statute therefore makes the victim’s age legally significant, but the charge itself is only an accusation. Prosecutors would still need to establish the required intent and other elements. The sources reviewed for this report do not include a defense filing explaining how Fleander intends to contest the charge or the warrant allegations.
The forensic evidence and Fleander’s alleged statement may also raise questions that cannot be resolved from summaries of the warrant alone. Investigators will have to connect the injuries documented by medical professionals with events inside the residence and determine how the timing and mechanics of those injuries fit the witness accounts. Defense attorneys, if the case proceeds toward trial, would have the opportunity to challenge the reliability of statements, the interpretation of forensic evidence and the legal conclusions prosecutors draw from them. None of those future arguments can be assumed from the arrest documents currently available.
The sheriff’s office has said the investigation involved coordination with the district attorney’s office and the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services. That coordination followed the discovery that Fleander had been caring for several children at the residence. WAFB reported that an older child drove Fleander and the injured girl to the hospital. Authorities have not publicly accused that driver or the other people at the home of participating in the alleged fatal assault, and the sheriff’s office said after the arrest that it did not anticipate additional arrests.
Fleander was booked Aug. 13 into the Assumption Parish Detention Center on first-degree murder and a separate failure-to-appear charge tied to simple battery. The initial sheriff’s release said he was awaiting a bond hearing; the Sept. 25 warrant report said booking records showed he was being held without bond. No finding of guilt has been made. The next phase of the case will determine how the witness statements, Fleander’s reported interview and the child’s medical findings stand up when moved from an arrest investigation into formal criminal proceedings.
Author note: Last updated September 28, 2026.