Edward Wagner says he warned officials before his daughter Nevaeh died and now wants Tennessee lawmakers to tighten child-protection rules.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Weeks after the death of his 4-month-old daughter, Edward Wagner carried his concerns from a child-welfare office into Tennessee’s legislative debate, asking lawmakers whether the state should do more when a convicted child abuser is allowed to live with or care for another child.
Wagner met with state Sen. Mark Pody on Oct. 8 to discuss possible legislation named for Nevaeh Petty, the infant who died after suffering severe head injuries while in the care of her mother’s boyfriend, Bobby Randall Conner Jr. Wagner said he had warned both Nevaeh’s mother and the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services about Conner before his daughter was hurt. Pody said lawmakers should examine whether existing procedures were followed and whether state law leaves dangerous gaps. The proposed “Nevaeh’s Law” was still at an early stage, and no final bill language had been established in the reporting reviewed for this article.
The push for legislation followed a loss Wagner said he had feared. He told WSMV that he knew of Conner’s criminal history and had warned Jessica Petty, Nevaeh’s mother, that Conner should not be around their daughter. Wagner said he also contacted DCS multiple times. According to his account, a welfare check was conducted and Nevaeh was found unharmed. Wagner said a caseworker told him Conner was not a sex offender and therefore could be around the child. DCS has not confirmed those details, citing Tennessee laws that keep records involving specific child-welfare cases confidential.
Conner’s documented criminal history has made Wagner’s warnings a central part of the public discussion. Metro Nashville police said Conner, 32, was convicted of child abuse in August 2020 and received a four-year sentence. Police said he was convicted again of child neglect following a March 2025 arrest and received a one-year sentence. Local reporting said he was released in August 2026. Those convictions do not establish his guilt in Nevaeh’s death, but they have fueled questions about whether parents and state agencies have enough information or authority when evaluating who may safely care for children.
On Sept. 19, those broader policy questions were still in the future. Police were called shortly before 5 p.m. to a home on 24th Avenue North for an unresponsive infant. Nevaeh was taken to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. According to police, Conner said he had been lying in bed with the baby while Petty was at work, left briefly to use the restroom and found the infant unresponsive when he came back. Doctors later reported serious internal head injuries, including retinal hemorrhaging, that police said indicated abuse. Nevaeh was placed on life support and died several days later.
Conner was arrested Sept. 23 and initially charged with aggravated child abuse. A judicial commissioner set his bond at $500,000. Police said after Nevaeh’s death that detectives would consult prosecutors about upgraded charges, and some news reports later described him as facing murder. At an Oct. 6 hearing, however, reporting identified the case before the judge as aggravated child abuse. After testimony from three witnesses, the judge found enough evidence to send the case to a Davidson County grand jury. The court’s ruling did not determine guilt, and Conner’s attorneys disputed the prosecution’s assertion that he caused the child’s injuries.
For Wagner, the court proceedings did not answer the question that had been troubling him since before Nevaeh’s death: why Conner was permitted to remain near his daughter despite the earlier convictions. That question has no simple answer in the public record. NewsChannel 5 reported that Tennessee law did not authorize DCS to remove an otherwise healthy child merely because someone in the household had prior child-abuse convictions, absent additional legal grounds or a court order. The station reported that a different set of restrictions could have applied to certain sexual offenses. DCS itself has not said publicly how those legal distinctions were applied in Nevaeh’s case.
The distinction helped shape Wagner’s meeting with Pody. One idea discussed was a public registry for people convicted of child abuse, giving parents and caregivers a way to check a person’s history. DCS responded that Tennessee already maintains a child-abuse registry, but it is not comparable to the publicly searchable sex-offender registry. The DCS list can include people substantiated by the department as perpetrators of abuse or neglect, and its information may be disclosed for certain background checks involving jobs in which adults supervise children. State law otherwise keeps the registry confidential.
That means a proposal described publicly as a new registry would, in practice, require lawmakers to decide whether existing information should be disclosed more broadly and under what circumstances. The question involves more than criminal convictions because the DCS registry and criminal courts operate under different standards and processes. DCS said any change to make its registry public, or any new restriction placed on people convicted of child abuse, would ultimately be a decision for the General Assembly. The department said it would review legislation if lawmakers formally file it.
Pody has framed his role as determining whether the system operated as lawmakers intended. He said he wanted to know whether procedures were properly followed and whether anyone failed to act when warning signs were present. He also said repeated involvement with the justice system could indicate a pattern that lawmakers should take seriously. His comments stopped short of declaring that DCS violated existing law in Nevaeh’s case. No public investigation reviewed for this article has reached such a conclusion, and the confidentiality of child-welfare records leaves much of the agency’s underlying decision-making unavailable to the public.
Petty, meanwhile, has also invoked DCS in describing the events before her daughter’s death. She told NewsChannel 5 that she believed the agency had allowed Conner to be around Nevaeh and said officials should answer why he was permitted near the child. Petty knew about Conner’s criminal history, according to the station. She declined to answer when asked whether leaving the infant with him created a risk. The station also reported that Petty had lost custody of two other children and said she had spent years using drugs before entering recovery. She described Nevaeh’s birth as an opportunity to start again as a mother.
The parents’ accounts overlap on one central fact: each knew about Conner’s past. They differ in how they describe responsibility for the decision to allow him around Nevaeh. Wagner has said he objected and sought state intervention. Petty has said she relied on DCS allowing the arrangement. Because the department cannot publicly discuss the specific case, the record available to news organizations does not show exactly what DCS workers were told, what records they reviewed, what risks they identified or what legal options they considered. That missing information is likely to remain important if lawmakers use Nevaeh’s case as a basis for changing state law.
The legislative effort is occurring while the criminal prosecution remains active. At the Oct. 6 preliminary hearing, prosecutors presented testimony that a woman in the home heard Conner yelling at the crying baby, while a responding officer and detective described Nevaeh’s condition and the effort to save her. Prosecutors argued the infant suffered abusive head trauma while in Conner’s care. His defense said the state had not proved that he inflicted the injuries. A grand jury was expected to consider whether to indict him. The legal standard in that proceeding is separate from any policy judgment lawmakers may make about his previous convictions.
Wagner has said his goal is to prevent another family from confronting the same circumstances. Reporting after his meeting with Pody said Nevaeh had been laid to rest and that Wagner was visiting her burial place daily. He also said his daughter became an organ donor and that her heart went to a child who had been waiting for a transplant. Those personal details have become part of his argument for legislative action, but any change would require lawmakers to work through questions about due process, confidentiality, public access to records and the threshold for restricting a person’s contact with children.
Currently, “Nevaeh’s Law” remains a proposal rather than enacted legislation, and the criminal case against Conner had not resulted in a conviction. Wagner’s campaign has nevertheless shifted the story beyond the circumstances of one infant’s death to a broader question Tennessee lawmakers may soon confront: when the state knows an adult has previously harmed children, what legal tools should exist before another child is placed in that person’s care?
Author note: Last updated November 8, 2026.