Police said a 4-year-old girl’s injuries led detectives to reject an initial account that she accidentally fell from a second-story apartment window.
BOSSIER CITY, La. — A 37-year-old woman is accused of attempted second-degree murder after Bossier City police said their investigation found she pushed and kicked her 4-year-old daughter from a second-story window at an apartment complex on April 8.
The case drew attention because police said the girl’s injuries were first described as the result of an accidental fall, then were reclassified after detectives interviewed people connected to the child and the apartment. The girl was taken to Ochsner Medical Center in Shreveport with fractures to both wrists and both forearms, according to police. On April 14, Bossier City police announced an arrest warrant for Sharonica Davis in the case. By then, the child had been treated and released from the hospital, and officials said she had been placed in the care of the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services.
The investigation began on April 8 after the girl was brought to the hospital from the Mirage Apartments on East Texas Street in Bossier City. Police said the first account presented to officers was that the child had fallen from a second-story window. That explanation placed the case in the category of a possible accident, at least at the start, and it appears to have shaped the earliest version of events. Detectives with the department’s Juvenile Division later conducted multiple interviews and revisited what happened inside the apartment before the girl was hurt. Sgt. Shawn Poudrier, a spokesman for the department, said detectives concluded the child did not simply fall. Instead, he said, investigators found that Davis “pushed her, kicked her out of the window.” That allegation became the basis for the attempted second-degree murder charge announced less than a week after the child was hospitalized.
Police have released only a narrow set of public facts, and several important details remain unknown. Officers have not publicly said what time the girl went out the window, how far she fell in feet, whether anyone else was in the room at the time, or what first drew emergency responders to the apartment. They also have not described the condition of the ground below the window, a detail that could help explain how the child survived despite the severity of her injuries. What police have said is that the girl’s injuries were serious enough to send her to a regional hospital and serious enough to prompt further scrutiny when detectives compared the medical findings with the first version of the story. As of April 19, police had not released an affidavit spelling out the interview statements or other evidence that led investigators to seek the more severe charge.
The setting is a modest apartment complex in Bossier City, a city of neighborhoods, shopping corridors and older residential buildings across the Red River from Shreveport. East Texas Street is one of the city’s main commercial routes, lined with apartments, small businesses and steady traffic, which makes the Mirage Apartments a familiar place rather than an isolated location on the edge of town. That matters because the case did not unfold in secret deep inside a rural parish. It unfolded in an ordinary housing complex in a city where police and child welfare agencies regularly respond to calls involving families, injuries and domestic disputes. Even with that backdrop, the allegation stood out because of the age of the child, the height involved and the serious fractures police said she suffered in both arms, injuries that suggested more than a routine childhood mishap.
The legal posture of the case is also unusually layered. When Bossier City police announced the warrant on April 14, they said Davis was already at the Caddo Correctional Center on other charges and had been interviewed there by detectives. Public reports have said one of those earlier charges was cruelty to juveniles connected to the same incident, though police centered their public announcement on the new attempted second-degree murder warrant. Because Davis was in custody in neighboring Caddo Parish rather than in Bossier City, the next procedural step was expected to be a transfer or extradition so the Bossier charge could be formally addressed in court. No public filing reviewed by April 19 showed a later hearing date, bond ruling or plea. That left the case in a transitional stage, with the accusation publicly announced but the court process not yet fully visible.
The child, meanwhile, had already moved into a separate system, one focused less on criminal liability and more on immediate safety. Police said she was treated and later released into the care of the Department of Children and Family Services. Agencies often reveal little about those placements because the subjects are minors, and that was also true here. Officials did not say whether relatives were considered, whether siblings were involved, or how long the state expected to retain custody. Those omissions are typical in child welfare cases, but they leave a large gap in public understanding. The basic point was clear enough: the girl was no longer in the apartment where police said she was injured. Her medical treatment was complete enough for hospital release, but the criminal investigation had advanced to the point that authorities did not return her to her mother’s care.
Poudrier’s public comments showed how strongly investigators viewed the allegations once the case shifted from an apparent accident to a suspected assault. “It’s a sad situation,” he said in one interview, adding that child abuse cases can take “an emotional toll” on officers who handle them. Those remarks did not add new evidence, but they did signal how the case was being understood inside the department. Police were not talking about a preventable household mishap or a parenting lapse. They were describing a deliberate act severe enough, in their view, to support one of the most serious charges available short of a completed homicide. Even so, the public record remained incomplete. No defense attorney had publicly answered the allegation, and no court testimony had yet tested the detective work behind the warrant.
The case also illustrates how quickly a criminal investigation can change when a child’s injuries do not match the first explanation given to police. The difference between an accidental fall and an intentional act is not a matter of tone or wording. It determines which detectives lead the case, what charges are considered, how child welfare agencies respond and whether prosecutors begin building a potential felony prosecution. Here, that shift happened over six days, from the girl’s hospitalization on April 8 to the public announcement of the attempted murder warrant on April 14. By that point, the known facts had narrowed into a stark sequence: a child was injured at the apartment complex, she arrived at the hospital with broken wrists and forearms, detectives said the injuries were not accidental, and her mother became the person accused of causing them.
As of April 19, the warrant against Davis remained the clearest public marker of where the case stood. The girl had been released from the hospital and placed in state care, but police had not publicly released additional evidence, and no later courtroom milestone had been announced. The next significant development is likely to be Davis’ transfer to face the Bossier City charge or a first court appearance laying out the accusation in formal proceedings.
Author note: Last updated April 19, 2026.