A baby died of severe abuse last week in Kansas City. Why hasn’t someone been arrested?

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More than a week after a 7-month-old baby died in Kansas City of injuries consistent with serious abuse, police have not yet made an arrest or even named a suspect in the case.

Giovanni Carr, known as Gio, was hospitalized with severe injuries on June 15, and died in the early morning of June 20.

The Kansas City Police Department has classified Gio’s death as a suspicious death. Detectives’ ongoing investigation into the baby’s final hours have been classified as a death investigation, rather than a homicide investigation, Sgt. Phil DiMartino, a KCPD spokesperson, told The Star.

Police detectives are currently awaiting lab test results on Gio Carr’s body, DiMartino said.

As they wait, Gio’s family prepares for his funeral and grieves together.

“I swear I’m going to war over you,” Armoni Carr, Giovanni’s mother, wrote on social media Thursday in a eulogy addressed to her son. “I am so broken.”

Gio Carr’s death

Giovanni Armon D’Angelo Carr was the first and only child of Armoni Carr, 20. The Kansas City, Kansas, resident had been raising Gio as a single mother, according to posts on social media.

“This is Armoni’s first child,” Armoni Carr’s aunt, Thea Harris, told The Star last week. “He really did not deserve this… this is something so unbearable.”

Carr declined to speak with The Star directly.

Harris told The Star that Giovanni Carr was in the care of his godmother at the time he was allegedly injured. The godmother was Carr’s best friend at the time, and had watched Gio before, but never by herself, Harris told The Star last week.

“They were always together,” Harris told The Star. “They’ve been friends for over ten years.”

The Star has not reported the name of the alleged godmother, since she has not been arrested or charged as of June 28.

Carr and her family allege that Gio had no injuries when his godmother picked him up around 4:30 p.m. on June 15.

Carr had put Gio in the care of his godmother so she could go to her first shift at a new job, The Star previously reported. Carr started working for Amazon on July 15, according to Harris.

The infant remained in the woman’s care for close to 7 hours.

Armoni Carr texted Gio’s godmother to check on her son around 9 p.m. on June 15. After saying around 11:15 that he was okay, the godmother responded again around 11:30, saying that Gio had fallen sick and was “breathing funny.”

Gio Carr was taken to the hospital around 11:30 on June 15 from a home on the 5300 block of Olive Street, in the Blue Hills neighborhood of Kansas City. His godmother was the one to call the ambulance, The Star previously reported.

Armoni Carr met Gio at a local hospital around 4 a.m. on June 16, after her shift at work, Harris told The Star.

Hospital staff said the baby had “suffered significant bodily trauma,” according to Officer Alayna Gonzalez, a spokesperson for the Kansas City Police Department. Gio arrived at the hospital on June 15 with traumatic injuries to his brain, eyes, and liver, according to Harris. Gio also had fractured ribs, a lacerated spleen and burns on his foot.

Spleen injuries are typically caused by blunt-force trauma to the upper chest, around the left ribs, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Most rib fractures are also caused by blunt-force trauma to the chest, according to the National Library of Medicine.

Baby Gio was pronounced dead at 1:59 a.m. on June 20.

Investigating Gio’s death

The Kansas City Police Department is still actively investigating Gio Carr’s death, DiMartino told The Star. DiMartino said that is why KCPD has declined to share many details about why no one has been charged, eight days later.

An autopsy for Gio Carr took place Friday, June 21. Police detectives are still waiting on certain lab results, without which KCPD cannot complete its investigation, DiMartino said. DiMartino said the department does not have a sense of when lab results will return, or when the investigation is expected to conclude.

The woman alleged to be Gio’s godmother has not been booked into the Jackson County Detention Center as of June 28, according to court records. No cases are currently pending against her in Jackson County court.

Kansas City police declined to comment on whether they consider Gio’s godmother to be a suspect in his death, or whether other suspects have been identified. Police also declined to share how much contact detectives have had with Gio’s family, as well as what specific lab results detectives are waiting on and whether anything further is known about what caused Gio’s injuries.

The department also declined to share whether officers have previously seen similar injuries on an infant. Harris, Armoni Carr’s aunt and Gio’s great-aunt, told The Star last week that Gio was discovered with “injuries that I’ve never seen, never even heard of.”

If Gio’s death is ruled a homicide, he will be at least the fifth young child allegedly killed by a caregiver in Kansas City in the last three years. In each of the four previous cases, the child or infant’s mother was charged in their death.

Most recently, a 1-month-old infant was found deceased in a Manheim Park home in February with significant burns, The Star reported. The infant’s mother, Mariah Thomas, admitted to putting the baby in the oven.

In November 2023, 5-year-old Grayson O’Connor fell to his death from their 17th floor apartment, after his mother Corinne O’Connor allegedly removed the window stops in their apartment. In 2022, Tasha Haefs allegedly beheaded her six-year-old son Karvell Stevens. Later that year, Adair Fish was charged in the death of her five-year-old daughter Ivy House, after House’s severely malnourished body was discovered in Fish’s apartment in November 2022.

The Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office was unavailable Thursday and Friday to comment on whether the state has received any records related to charges in Gio Carr’s death.

Burying a baby

Armoni Carr, Gio’s mom, graduated from Wyandotte High School in 2022, according to social media. She also attended Kansas City, Kansas Community College, according to social media and worked at the amusement park Worlds of Fun before taking the Amazon job.

Since Gio’s death, Carr and her family have faced severe backlash on social media for allegedly placing Gio in the care of a friend.

“Don’t ever get on [social media] like I was neglecting my son,” Carr wrote June 20, after news of Gio’s death broke. “I was his only [expletive] parent, doing everything for him.”

Gio’s death isn’t the first time that Armoni Carr has had to bury a loved one. Carr’s brother, 18-year-old Aaron Carr, was fatally shot in 2020. An honor student at Wyandotte County High School, Aaron Carr loved riding bicycles, playing basketball and spending time with his family, according to an obituary posted by Aaron’s aunt, Tameya McNeal.

A funeral service for Gio will be held on July 6. A fundraiser towards funeral expenses for Gio has raised just over $3,800 as of Friday.

Thea Harris said Wednesday that the family has not yet raised enough money to properly lay Gio to rest.

“Right now, we’re just really, really focusing on trying to get him buried,” Harris said.