WESTMINSTER, Md., April 14 (UPI) -- A Maryland man has been charged with raping and physically assaulting his girlfriend's toddler daughter.
Ryan Gifford, 23, of Westminster, a suburban area west of Baltimore, was being held in the Carroll County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail, The Baltimore Sun reported. Bail was set at a detention hearing Monday.
The 21-month-old girl was in Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. She was transferred to intensive care there from Carroll Hospital Center.
Police reported the mother said she and her daughter spent Saturday night with Gifford. She said she went to sleep after drinking a lot of wine and woke to find Gifford in the bathroom with her daughter.
Gifford reportedly told her she had fallen and was washing off the blood. The mother went back to sleep but in the morning she took her to the hospital where doctors called police.
Doctors at the hospital found signs the girl had been burned and raped, police said.
Police searched Gifford's house and found some of the baby's hair on a bloody T-shirt.
"Blood was found on his bed, baby pack-and-play, baby's socks, and toilet seat," Cpl. William Burdt, a sheriff's officer, wrote in the report. "I told Gifford what we had found in his room and he stated, 'Must have been her blood -- I don't remember anything.'"
