MARION COUNTY, Fla. — It took 45 minutes for Jeroen Coombs to learn he would not be allowed out of jail as deputies continued to investigate how a 3-year-old girl in his care wound up dead last week.
During that time, with Coombs keeping his head mostly bowed, he listened as investigators detailed their findings against him as they push for a homicide charge and investigate his girlfriend.
Coombs was arrested and accused of killing Paisley Brown, his girlfriend’s daughter, in a trailer in Citra.
Investigators said he bound her hands and feet overnight, then dropped her on the ground and punched her several times.
They said he didn’t call 911 for 40 minutes after she became unresponsive – though Paisley’s great aunt, who performed CPR on the girl, claimed the girl was already dead by the time first responders arrived.
Marion County detectives said Paisley was not the only child abused at the home. Wednesday, they explained how they found makeshift cages using play pens, blankets and tape, which contained Paisley and the other young children at the home.
“With a child inside of it, it would be completely dark,” Detective Karla Santana-Palau testified.
Another older child, Santana-Palau said, was handcuffed in his bedroom. He told detectives he could hear Paisley being beaten through the walls.
“He heard the banging and that he hears that when someone’s being punched,” she relayed.
She said he was left out of his handcuffs by Paisley’s mother, who WFTV is not naming because she has not been charged, when the mother got home minutes before deputies arrived.
Other allegations raised more questions about what the mother knew that day. Paisley, they said, was tied up using part of the mother’s bathrobe. They also found pieces of tape in the trash.
Coombs was primarily responsible for the children’s care while the mother worked, they said. That morning, the mother was running errands. They said she was notified her daughter was unresponsive and continued her nail appointment before going home.
Investigators told the judge they were still in the early stages of their search, which included receiving the autopsy performed on Paisley.
They said it showed she had blunt force trauma to the back of the head – which may have come from Coombs dropping her.
He told investigators it was because she was wriggling, while he explained the binding as punishment for messing with her diaper.
Investigators said he and Paisley’s mother had only been dating for four to six months, “depending on who you ask.”
The mother, who had posted several apologies to her daughter on her Facebook page, has since deleted all the posts.
She has not returned WFTV’s phone calls or text messages.
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