Prosecutors have charged a Baltimore man and his girlfriend in the beating death of his infant daughter. Emergency personnel responding to a report of a child not breathing on Dec. 19 arrived at the Belair-Edison neighborhood apartment of Jerome Jermain Wallace and Natarsha Farmer to find Wallace attempting to administer CPR to 22-month old Janaya Wallace. The child was taken to the emergency room at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she was pronounced dead a short time later, according to the charging documents. Detectives examining the body at the hospital noted trauma to her face and neck; a medical examiner found multiple internal and external injuries and ruled the death a homicide. Wallace, 24, and Farmer, 22, both of the 2800 block of Kentucky Avenue, were each charged with first- and second-degree murder, first-degree child abuse resulting in death, first- and second-degree assault and other offenses. Farmer was not Janaya's biological mother, according to the charging documents. According to the documents, Farmer and Wallace gave conflicting statements to investigators about their whereabouts in the hours before Janaya's death. According to the documents, two independent witnesses told investigators that Wallace and Farmer were in the basement apartment with the infant between midnight and 2 p.m. on Dec. 19, when Wallace said he discovered that she was not breathing. One of the witnesses reported seeing Janaya asleep without obvious injury at midnight, according to the documents. Wallace and Farmer were arrested on warrants last week, a spokeswoman for State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy said. They were being held without bail at the Baltimore City Detention Center pending a hearing on Monday.

-Matthew Hay Brown