More than a year after Dahlia Siebenhaar was taken to a hospital unresponsive, her father faces a child manslaughter charge.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Dahlia Siebenhaar was 5 weeks old when she was rushed to a hospital unresponsive in December 2024, and the child’s death 10 days later is now the basis of a felony case against her father.
Authorities arrested Dajuan Patrick, 27, in March 2026 and accused him of aggravated manslaughter of a child after investigators said the infant’s medical record, autopsy findings and witness interviews showed fatal abuse. The case matters now because it turns the child’s final days, once documented mainly in medical and death records, into the opening evidence of a public prosecution.
The clearest timeline in the case is the shortest one. Dahlia arrived at the hospital the night of Dec. 2, 2024, already unresponsive, according to the sheriff’s office and follow-up coverage. Doctors placed her on life support, but she never recovered consciousness. On Dec. 12, life support was withdrawn. Those 10 days are important not because many public details are available about them, but because they form the period between collapse and death that prosecutors are likely to use to explain the seriousness of the injuries and the absence of any recovery. Public reports do not describe extended bedside statements from family members or doctors, leaving the medical findings to speak most loudly.
Those findings were severe and wide-ranging. Authorities said Dahlia suffered extensive head trauma, broken ribs, bruising across her body and retinal hemorrhages. The sheriff’s office said the injuries were caused by shaking and by being held with extreme force. Later, Dr. James Fulcher, the Volusia County chief medical examiner, ruled the death a homicide. That ruling did more than label the manner of death. It gave investigators a formal basis to treat the child’s death as a criminal act rather than an unresolved medical emergency, and it shaped the charge that would follow many months later.
The father’s arrest came well after the child’s death, which makes delay part of the story. Patrick was arrested in Jacksonville in March 2026 on a Volusia County warrant. The sheriff’s office said its investigation relied on interviews, medical records and other evidence and concluded that Patrick shook and spanked the infant, causing the fatal injuries. News reports later said he was being held without bond after prosecutors sought pretrial detention. What remains unknown in public is how quickly each interview occurred, what exact statements pushed the case forward and whether defense filings will dispute the interpretation of the child’s injuries.
Even without many courtroom details yet, the public message from authorities has been direct. Sheriff Mike Chitwood said the arrest would not bring Dahlia back or give her “the childhood she deserved,” but said officials were “speaking up for her” because “her life mattered.” That wording placed the victim at the center of the announcement, a notable choice in a case where the underlying facts involve a baby too young to speak and a medical record too painful to narrate in ordinary family terms. The statement also signaled that the sheriff’s office viewed the arrest not as the end of the case, but as the point where Dahlia’s death would finally be argued in court.
The next chapter is procedural. Patrick still must answer the charge in Volusia County, and future hearings are expected to determine how the homicide case will proceed, what evidence prosecutors intend to present first and whether more of the investigative record becomes public. By early April 2026, reporting had established the arrest, the charge, the no-bond status and the broad findings behind the case, but not a final hearing schedule or trial calendar.
For now, the public record begins with Dahlia’s final hospital stay and ends with a pending prosecution that authorities say is meant to account for how that stay began.
Author note: Last updated April 7, 2026.