Rolla man indicted for baby’s death

A Rolla man has been indicted for the Jan. 2013 abuse and murder of an 11-month-old infant.

A Phelps County grand jury indicted 25-year-old Brent Black with child abuse and second-degree murder for the death of Sapphire Jade Gibbs.

According to the county prosecutor, emergency responders were dispatched on Jan. 26 to a home on Farrar Drive in Rolla for a report of a baby that was not breathing.

The baby was first taken to Phelps County Regional Medical Center before being transported to a children’s hospital in St. Louis, where she was pronounced dead two days later.

Prosecutors believe Black, the boyfriend of Sapphire’s mother, abused the child by “inflicting an injury” to her head, which resulted in her death.

Black was arrested on Thursday. He remains in the Phelps County Jail on a $500,000 bond.

ABC 17 News talked with Sapphire’s family, who said the father is devastated.

“We were all there at the hospital immediately,” said Sapphire’s great aunt Elizabeth Wilson. “He just held her little hand and said goodbye. Knowing what we knew when it happened and there not being an arrest was very heartbreaking and devastating.”