Who is Jessica Bortle? Florida woman set to face trial for allegedly killing her daughter with special needs
PENSACOLA, FLORIDA: An Alabama woman, 36, is set to face trial for allegedly killing her daughter, 14, by slamming a table into the girl’s abdomen and “obliterating” her liver while the teen was in a hospital bed in Florida.
Jury selection for the trial started on Monday, July 23 and opening statements are scheduled to begin on Thursday. Assistant State Attorney Nathaniel Sebastian is leading the prosecution while Assistant Public Defender Marci McCoy is representing the accused Jessica Bortle.
Who is Jessica Bortle?
Court records show that Jessica Bortle is facing one count of manslaughter and one count of aggravated battery in the 2021 slaying of young Jasmine Singletary. Officers with the Pensacola Police Department responded to a call on July 21, 2021, from the District One Medical Examiner’s Office regarding a homicide at Sacred Heart Hospital that involved a 14-year-old girl with a neuromuscular disorder.
The medical examiner informed the authorities that the child, Jasmine, had been admitted to the hospital on July 8 suffering from a “closed head injury of suspicious origins.”
How did the child die?
Jasmine died in her hospital room five days later after mysteriously sustaining “massive injuries similar to those found on traffic crash victims.” According to the autopsy report, Jasmine suffered two fractured ribs and that her liver had been “ripped open due to blunt force trauma.” “[The doctor] described the liver as obliterated and that the trauma caused [Jasmine] to die within minutes of receiving the injury,” police wrote in the affidavit.
The child was confined to the bed in her hospital room and was accompanied by only her mother, Bortle, and her grandmother, Rose Mathis at the time of the inquiry. According to surveillance footage of the hospital hallway, Bortle was seen exiting her daughter’s room and “shaking and flexing her hand as if in pain” just moments prior to the hospital staff finding her daughter was unconscious.
Bortle initially “lied” to investigators
The mother initially claimed that she had no idea what could have caused her daughter’s injuries, but later admitted to striking the girl with a hospital table in anger. “Bortle told me that while in the hospital room, Jasmine began to cuss at her because she was mad about color crayons. Bortle became angry with Jasmine because she was cussing and the door to the room was opened,” the affidavit states. “Bortle slammed the hospital table into Jasmine’s abdomen and then leaned onto the table with her weight.”
The mother said that she kept on leaning into the table despite her daughter saying that she was in pain and “acknowledged the responsibility for causing the injury that killed Jasmine.”
What did the victim's grandmother say?
The victim's grandmother also gave a similar account as she told the investigators that “s— hit the fan” just before the incident. She added that Bortle initially moved the hospital table to Jasmine so she could color, but her anger got the better of her when her child was soon “cussing” and “throwing and breaking crayons".
As per the investigators, Bortle leaned on the table with all of her weight for so long that she “ground the table into Jasmine’s liver which caused the ‘obliteration'” described by the doctor. Bortle will face up to 45 years in prison if convicted on both counts.