A Rockville, Maryland, day-care operator was charged with murder Monday in what police described as the child abuse death of a 6-month-old girl under his care. The infant, Miller “Millie” Lilliston of Rockville, suffered at least 11 cracked ribs, a fractured arm, a fractured thigh bone, head injuries, facial bruises and lacerations to the inside of her mouth, according to Montgomery County District Court records.
The suspect, Kia Divband, 35, is scheduled to make his first court appearance on Tuesday. He is being held in jail on $2 million bond. It is unclear if he has retained an attorney, and no one responded to a door knock at his home.
Divband and his wife own Little Dreamers Creative Learning Center, a licensed day-care center in the basement of their home on Grandin Avenue in Rockville’s Twinbrook area, according to arrest records and the day-care center’s website.
“We strive to provide a safe and fun learning environment for all the children in our care,” a posting attributed to Divband reads on the center’s website, adding: “Punishment that is humiliating or frightening to a child, such as hitting, spanking, shaking . . . and other forms of physical punishment are PROHIBITED.”
He has been charged with second-degree murder, first-degree child abuse resulting in death, and first-degree child abuse.
A relative of the child’s parents politely declined to comment outside their home Tuesday and said the parents did not want to comment.
On April 19, Millie was taken by ambulance from the day-care center to a hospital. In an affidavit filed in court, police describe two scenarios:
One advanced by Divband, who said the child had been sick for two weeks and started choking and vomiting when he tried to feed her a bottle. She became unresponsive, Divband said, and he performed several rounds of CPR, before yelling at his wife to call 911.
The second scenario, the one that detectives believe, is that Divband inflicted massive trauma on the child while alone with her, and then tried to cover his tracks by, among other actions, cleaning out blood from the basement.
Detectives put their case together by interviewing doctors, Divband, his wife and the parents of the little girl. The following is the detectives’ account, as described in their affidavit.
The weekend of April 16 and 17, Millie seemed normal and healthy, according to her mothers. She spent the next day at Little Dreamers and seemed fine after she was picked up at the end of the day.
According to the affidavit, Detective Beverley Then was given a photo of Millie by her mothers, taken the evening of April 18. It “showed no signs of bruising anywhere on her face,” detectives wrote. “Millie’s mothers stated she did not suffer any serious injuries prior to being in Kia’s care.”
The next morning, Millie was dropped off at Little Dreamers. The girl took a nap, Kia Divband told the detectives, and he then tried to feed her a 6-ounce bottle of breast milk while Millie was in her stroller.
Divband said that over the previous two weeks, Millie had had trouble drinking her bottle because of congestion. And on April 19, he said, she drank only half the bottle before choking and vomiting. Divband said he took the baby to the bathroom to clean her and noticed her “lips had turned blue and she was unresponsive.”
Divband told detectives he tried to save the child.
Divband described himself online as fluent in English and Farsi. He said he studied computer science in college before forging a career in early childhood education. “Not a stereotypical vocation for a middle-eastern guy,” he wrote on the center’s website, “but one where I have truly grown and learned about my talents.”
After Millie arrived at the hospital, she was found to have bleeding inside her skull and rib fractures, police records show. Millie was alive but in an unresponsive state. She was flown by helicopter to Children’s National Medical Center, where tests showed more injuries.
Detectives spoke with Divband and his wife that same day. He volunteered to show detectives the area where Millie allegedly vomited. A detective looked into a trash can where she “viewed multiple wipes with what looked like blood on them.” Divband later would say that Millie had not bled, the court files show.
On April 21, with Millie still alive at the hospital, detectives returned to Little Dreamers with a search warrant. The trash can that had held bloody wipes had been emptied and placed outside next to trash bins. Inside, blood was found in several places, including the stroller where Divband said he’d fed a bottle to Millie.
In writing their affidavit, detectives described how Millie’s name had been removed from the bin that held her belongings, even though Millie was still alive, and even though the name of a different child, who had left Little Dreamers weeks earlier, was still on that child’s bin.
Millie was pronounced dead April 22. According to Children’s Hospital records, Millie’s extensive injuries “are not consistent with a choking/aspiration event, as described by Kia, and are most consistent with repeated incidents of physical abuse,” the detectives wrote.
An autopsy of Millie ruled the manner of death homicide “caused by multiple blunt-force injuries.”
Two neighbors on Tuesday described Divband as friendly and pleasant.
A third person in the neighborhood, Katrina Sten, said she was in town staying with relatives, as she was last summer when she met Divband outside his home. He was with his wife and their child who appeared to be about 4 years old. He was handing out fliers to a day-care business that he said he was starting.
“He just seemed like a dad who wanted to stay home with his kids,” Sten said. “Your everyday soccer dad, friendly, normal. He had a smile in his face.”
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Dan Morse
