Prosecutors said the 10-month-old boy suffered abusive head trauma while in the sitter’s care in Kershaw County in 2020.

KERSHAW COUNTY, S.C. — A South Carolina babysitter was sentenced to 33 years in prison after a jury convicted him in the death of a 10-month-old boy who stopped breathing while in his care and died two days later, prosecutors and local authorities said.

The sentence closes a case that began on March 9, 2020, when emergency crews were called to a home on Pine Grove Road in Kershaw County. Prosecutors said Jacob Ray Wescott was babysitting the child, known publicly as Baby Jack, when the boy suffered severe injuries later described by medical experts as abusive head trauma. The verdict and sentence mark the final trial-stage outcome in a case that drew on testimony from doctors, investigators and a pathologist, with immediate stakes centered on criminal accountability for the child’s death.

A Kershaw County jury convicted Wescott of homicide by child abuse on Feb. 9, and Circuit Judge Milton G. Kimpson sentenced him the same day to serve 33 years in the South Carolina Department of Corrections. Prosecutors said the chain of events started nearly six years earlier, when the Kershaw County Fire Department and the Kershaw County Sheriff’s Office responded after the infant stopped breathing at Wescott’s residence. By the time deputies arrived, firefighters were performing CPR on the child in a vehicle outside the home, according to local reporting based on an incident report. The boy was first taken to Kershaw Health Emergency Room and then transferred to Prisma Health Children’s Hospital for higher-level care. Sheriff Lee Boan said at the time the case weighed heavily on first responders, calling it “a strain on everyone involved” as deputies, medics and firefighters handled the emergency and the investigation that followed.

Investigators said Wescott, who was 23 when he was arrested, gave deputies an account that did not match the injuries doctors found. According to local reporting, he said he had fed the baby formula about 90 minutes earlier and that both of them had been asleep when the child began “spazzing out.” He also said the child had been fine before he began choking. A witness inside the home called 911 after realizing the infant was not breathing, reports said. Medical professionals later determined the boy had suffered extensive head and body injuries, including a brain bleed and multiple bruises. Prosecutors said medical experts and a pathologist concluded the injuries were consistent with abusive head trauma, a term that replaced what was once commonly called shaken baby syndrome, and said the injuries were not accidental. Authorities have not publicly described in detail what they believe happened in the moments before the child became unresponsive, and they have not publicly explained what triggered the violence they say caused the fatal injuries.

The case turned on a short but devastating timeline. The child was injured on March 9, 2020, while being babysat, according to prosecutors and local authorities. He was transported by ambulance with an escort from the Kershaw County Sheriff’s Office and the Camden Police Department, local television station WACH reported days after the arrest. Two days later, on March 11, the boy was taken off life support and died from his injuries. Wescott was arrested that same day and charged with homicide by child abuse, authorities said. Public statements from prosecutors identified the victim only by age and did not describe Wescott’s relationship to the child’s family beyond saying he was babysitting the infant. The child became known in community fundraising and media reports as Baby Jack. A family friend wrote in an online fundraiser after the death that the boy was cremated and that his mother had been forced to plan a funeral at the time she should have been preparing for his first birthday.

The prosecution was handled by the Fifth Judicial Circuit Solicitor’s Office, which said Deputy Solicitors Curtis Pauling and Anna Browder, along with Assistant Solicitor Michael Bradbury, led the case. The office also said Kershaw County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Miles Taylor spearheaded the investigation and that the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division’s Child Fatality Unit collaborated with local law enforcement. Those details show how child death cases often move slowly through the court system as investigators collect medical records, expert opinions and witness statements before trial. In this case, the gap between the child’s death in March 2020 and the conviction in February 2026 stretched across nearly six years. Public records summarized in news releases do not explain the full reason for that timeline, and officials have not publicly laid out each delay, motion or scheduling issue that may have pushed the case toward a 2026 trial. What is clear from the official statements is that prosecutors relied heavily on medical findings and expert testimony to argue the fatal injuries were inflicted, not caused by illness or accident.

The sentencing brought a formal courtroom end to one of Kershaw County’s most serious child abuse cases in recent years. Wescott now faces a long prison term after the jury rejected his account of what happened in the home that day. Officials have not announced any further criminal charges against anyone else, and no separate defendants have been publicly identified in connection with the child’s death. The next procedural step, if any, would likely come through post-trial motions or an appeal, though no appeal was announced in the statements released after sentencing. For the child’s family, the case moved from emergency response to hospital treatment, death investigation, arrest, prosecution and sentencing over a span of years. For investigators and prosecutors, the conviction gave a final public answer to the central allegation in the case: that the baby died from intentionally inflicted injuries while he was being babysat.

Even in the brief public record, the human cost of the case stands out. Boan said in 2020 that his office’s victim advocate had been in contact with the child’s mother and that authorities were trying to help the family through the aftermath. Emergency workers had arrived at a home where a baby was not breathing, then doctors at two hospitals tried to save him before his family made the decision to remove life support. The case later returned to court as a set of testimony, timelines and forensic findings, but the facts never moved far from that first scene on Pine Grove Road and the hospital transfer that followed. The verdict does not answer every question about the final moments before the infant was hurt, but it does settle where the criminal case stands after trial: a conviction, a 33-year sentence and a court finding that the child’s death was the result of homicide by child abuse.

The case now stands with Wescott convicted and sentenced to 33 years. Any next milestone would come if a notice of appeal or other post-conviction filing is made in South Carolina court records.