Investigators say a father’s cellphone left home while his baby daughter was alone, challenging parts of the account he gave police.
MURRAY, Utah — At about 3:21 a.m. on Jan. 17, 2025, a cellphone belonging to Neal English Colby left the Murray home where his infant daughter had been placed in his care. Police say it returned roughly 43 minutes later. More than a year later, that digital trail became one of the key pieces of evidence cited in criminal charges over Celia Aurora Colby’s death.
The phone data gave investigators something the autopsy could not: a fixed segment of the night’s timeline. Authorities allege Celia, then just under 7 months old, remained unattended while Colby was away from the residence. Police said the phone spent the interval in an area they knew for drug activity. The location history did not establish what happened to Celia or when she became unresponsive, but investigators considered it significant because it conflicted with aspects of Colby’s account and added to their concerns about supervision in the hours before the baby’s death.
The night’s events had begun with a handoff between separated parents who were still living in the same house. Celia’s mother stayed upstairs, while Colby was living in an unfinished basement. The mother later told investigators that she and a young son had been sick and that Celia had developed a cough and fever. She gave the baby children’s medicine, arranged an appointment with a pediatrician and, at approximately 2:30 a.m., brought Celia downstairs so Colby could care for her while she got some sleep.
Colby told officers that the baby drank from a bottle and fell asleep. According to the police account, he said he went upstairs to watch an online video and returned at intervals to check on Celia. He described wrapping her snugly in a blanket that came to her shoulders. He later suggested she could have pulled the blanket over her face. Investigators would eventually ask a child abuse pediatrician to examine that explanation along with the autopsy findings and the physical evidence recovered from the house.
Police encountered an immediate problem when they tried to check Colby’s movements. He initially said his cellphone had been misplaced, according to reports of the charging documents. Officers later located it between couch cushions where he had been sitting. A detective examining the device’s location history several days later found the departure shortly after 3:20 a.m. and a return shortly after 4 a.m. The 43-minute period became a point of comparison between what Colby had told investigators and what the digital record appeared to show.
Nothing in the location data by itself explains Celia’s death. That uncertainty runs throughout the case. There has been no public finding establishing that the baby died while Colby was away, and authorities have not said cellphone tracking shows what was occurring inside the home during the absence. Instead, prosecutors are relying on the alleged lack of supervision as part of a broader set of circumstances that also includes the condition of the basement, medical findings around Celia’s face and statements made after she was discovered.
The crisis was not reported until later that morning. Celia’s mother said she woke to Colby yelling for her and went downstairs, where she found the baby face up and unresponsive. She began CPR. According to her statement summarized in the charging documents, she asked Colby to call 911 but he did not, leaving her to contact dispatchers while attempting to revive the child. Emergency personnel were sent to the house at about 9:46 a.m. Officers found Celia in cardiac arrest. She was taken from the home but died while being transported toward the hospital.
Once police entered the basement, the setting itself became evidence. Officers described garbage and belongings scattered through the unfinished room. During the investigation, detectives reported finding bottles containing urine, litter boxes, drug paraphernalia and THC wax. Some of the cannabis concentrate was kept near baby food or children’s items, according to the police account. Investigators also documented reddish fluid on bedding near the area where Celia had been found. The room’s condition later became part of both the medical review and the child-endangerment allegations.
A pediatric specialist who examined the records said the human waste, animal waste and illicit drugs created an unhealthy and dangerous environment for an infant developing greater mobility. The specialist did not say the state of the basement alone caused Celia’s death. That distinction matters because the criminal case includes multiple alleged dangers, while the medical examiner ultimately could not identify a definitive manner of death. Prosecutors must connect the evidence to the legal elements of the charges rather than rely simply on the disturbing condition of the room.
The autopsy added another set of facts that were separate from the cellphone timeline. Examiners found abrasions around Celia’s nostrils, right cheek and chin. The injuries were not considered independently fatal, but the medical examiner said they presented the possibility that an outside force had obstructed the baby’s airway. A child abuse pediatrician later said the injuries around the nostrils could be seen when a caregiver pinches a child’s nose and noted that a death from asphyxia may not always be conclusively identified at autopsy. The specialist said manual obstruction by an adult could not be ruled out.
The pediatric review also addressed Colby’s suggestion that Celia might have suffocated after moving a blanket over her face. According to the specialist, evidence that Celia was able to roll and push herself up showed normal physical development for her age and made simple suffocation from a blanket she had moved herself less persuasive as an explanation. That was a medical opinion offered during the investigation, not a judicial determination that another person blocked the baby’s breathing.
Officers also scrutinized what happened after they arrived. The charging narrative describes police body-camera footage showing Colby vaping when officers were not directly observing him and crying or wailing when they spoke to him. Investigators included the conduct in their account of why they doubted portions of his story. Emotional behavior following a death can be interpreted in different ways and does not establish a cause of death. In court, the significance and admissibility of such evidence can be considered separately from the forensic and digital records.
By August 2026, authorities had assembled enough evidence to arrest Colby on child abuse homicide and child endangerment resulting in death allegations. The filing came roughly 19 months after Celia died. The length of the investigation underscores how much of the case had to be reconstructed rather than directly witnessed: a nighttime handoff, a disputed period of supervision, electronic location records, an unsafe living space, conflicting possible explanations and an autopsy that left the manner of death unresolved.
Celia’s obituary, published shortly after her death, recorded a life far removed from those investigative details. She was born June 18, 2024, and was remembered as an alert, cheerful baby who enjoyed sitting on her parents’ laps, riding in a stroller and spending time outdoors. Her family initially described her death as a tragic accident. Criminal allegations were not filed until the following year, after police had gathered and reviewed the later evidence.
What happens next will turn in part on whether prosecutors can connect the digital timeline to the circumstances of Celia’s death. The 43-minute absence documented through cellphone data gives investigators a specific period they say the infant was unattended, but the records do not establish when her fatal crisis began. That gap remains one of the factual issues the criminal case must resolve.
Author note: Last updated September 28, 2026.