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HAMILTON — Police stepped up the charges against a father accused of shaking his 5-month-old infant who died a day after she was taken to the hospital.

Vincent Blanda, 37, now faces a felony murder charge in the death of his daughter, Brooklyn Blanda.

Blanda turned himself in on the morning of Monday, March 24, after telling emergency dispatchers he shook the baby because she wouldn't stop crying.

"I did something stupid. I've had very little sleep, and my wife's at work. My 5-month-old baby woke up and I started shaking her a little bit and now she's kind of comatose," Blanda told emergency dispatchers.

The 911 tape also recorded Blanda saying that his wife warned him not to hurt the infant: "She already said if I hurt her, even accidentally you know, then I'm going to jail."

Brooklyn appeared "limp and pale" when police and paramedics arrived at Blanda's Williams Avenue apartment. The infant was taken to Cincinnati Children's Hospital for treatment of "severe abusive head trauma," where she died Tuesday.

Autopsy results have not been released by the Hamilton County Coroner's Office.

According to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, infants younger than 9 months especially are prone to injury when shaken because of a variety of factors, including the disproportionately large size of their heads, relatively weak neck muscles, pliability of the skull and the high water content of the infantile brain.

"It never ceases to amaze me that anybody could hurt a baby. A little baby that you hold in your arms; it is human life in its most innocent form," said Butler County Prosecutor Robin Piper.

Piper said if convicted, Blanda faces life in prison.

Blanda, a registered sex offender who was convicted of importuning in Brown County in 2003, is being held on $100,000 bond in the Butler County Jail.

He is scheduled to appear Tuesday, April 1, for a preliminary hearing in Hamilton Municipal Court.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2122 or rwilson@coxohio.com.