From the Courts: District Court

A Havre man received three years probation Monday in District Court for slapping his 4-month-old daughter in the face.

Levi C. Bixby, born in 1994, received a three-year deferred imposition of sentence for the offense of felony assault on a minor. The sentence was part of a plea deal that dismissed an additional similar offense and if Bixby abides by the conditions of his sentence he can have the offense struck from his record.

Havre Police City dispatch received a call Oct. 8, 2016, from a woman who said she was concerned her 4-month-old grand-daughter was being abused by the baby’s father, Bixby.

When officers responded, Bixby told them he became upset with the baby and “stepped over the line.” Bixby said he had spanked the baby because she pooped on everything. The officer asked Bixby to show him how hard he spanked the baby. When he did, the officer thought it was hard enough to cause serious injury. Bixby said he did it because he was very stressed and he’d never done anything like that in the past.

The officer noticed a bruise of a handprint on the baby’s outer thigh as well as on the left side of her face.

The baby’s mother said she asked, when Bixby had brought the baby to her to be nursed, why the baby had bruises on her face. The last time she had seen her baby, the mother said, she didn’t have bruises.

A Child Protective Services worker stopped in the emergency room to evaluate the baby’s injuries. The bruising on the baby’s face, the worker said, appeared to have been made by a slap.

The worker later told officers he had interviewed Bixby, who admitted to slapping the baby in the face.