![\"Anahita](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/d7e58292-ada8-46a7-8113-4e3c9fdf0260_1721668269.jpg\")
<\/a>SACRAMENTO, Calif. \u2014<\/p>\nEmari Thompson, who is being held at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center, admitted responsibility for the death of his 11-month-old daughter during an exclusive jailhouse interview, describing the incident as an accident. <\/p>\n
“Saturday should have just been a normal Saturday for me and my daughter. Just, you know, to have daddy daughter time,” Thompson said. <\/p>\n
Instead, the day ended with his daughter\u2019s death and Thompson in an orange jumpsuit. <\/p>\n
| PREVIOUS COVERAGE | Father arrested in connection with death of his 11-month-old child, Sacramento police say<\/a><\/p>\n “I\u2019m in here so it wasn\u2019t a good thing obviously,” he said. “I just wasn\u2019t paying attention to her.” <\/p>\n Thompson recounted the events of that day, starting at 1 a.m. when his daughter needed a diaper change. <\/p>\n “Normally what I do is when I don’t have any wipes to change her is put her in the bathtub just to clean that all off,” he said. <\/p>\n Thompson said he then went to lie down for what he thought would be five minutes. <\/p>\n “For five minutes. Five minutes eventually turned into 4 or 5 hours,” he said. <\/p>\n The next thing he remembered was his girlfriend waking him up. <\/p>\n “She asked me, why is the water running? Where’s the baby? In that moment and in that time that I woke up, I knew it was\u2026 It was over. I had forgotten. I left my daughter in the tub,” Thompson said. <\/p>\n His girlfriend called 911, and Thompson was later charged with one count of murder. <\/p>\n “Police tell us that you’re being charged with one count of murder. What is your response to that?” KCRA reporter Anahita Jafary asked. <\/p>\n “To be labeled as a murderer, I feel like that’s not right. I didn’t have that intent on hurting my daughter. [She] was my only child. My only daughter. So, you know, the fact that they labeled me as a murderer, you know, it makes me feel twice as mad,” Thompson said. <\/p>\n Thompson also revealed that this was not the first time his daughter had nearly drowned while in his care. <\/p>\n “So you believe that your daughter died due to an accidental drowning?” he was asked. <\/p>\n “Yes, I do,” Thompson said. <\/p>\n “Do you remember the baby crying at all?” <\/p>\n “No, I don’t. Honestly, I was in that much of a deep sleep,” he said. <\/p>\n When asked if he was guilty, Thompson admitted, “This is not the first time. There were incidents before or maybe one incident before where I had literally gotten my baby’s clothes, was getting ready to get her dressed to get out of the tub, and [while] she was playing, I was hearing noises. I heard slipping or possibly drowning, you know? So when it comes to guilt. Yeah, I’m guilty of that.” <\/p>\n When pressed further about not learning from the previous incident, Thompson said, “Honestly, I want to say I did in a way, but I didn\u2019t.” <\/p>\n Thompson also shared that his daughter would have turned one next month. <\/p>\n “It’s my first time being a dad. My daughter was 11 months old, but her birthday was next month on the 16th of September,” he said. <\/p>\n The Sacramento County District Attorney\u2019s Office confirmed that Thompson has not yet entered a plea in the case.<\/p>\n See more coverage of top California stories here<\/a> | Download our app<\/a> | Subscribe to our morning newsletter<\/a> | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel<\/a> | Make KCRA a preferred news source in Google<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sacramento father admits leaving baby in bathtub before death Emari Thompson, charged with murder in the drowning death…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[174558,20977,174555,174556,174559,5744,217,339,174055,6314,48397,4456,473,1331,174557,26341,121,123,122,9123,315],"class_list":["post-440238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-11-month-old-daughter","tag-baby","tag-baby-drowns-in-tub","tag-baby-killed-sacramento","tag-bathtub","tag-count","tag-day","tag-death","tag-emari-thompson","tag-father","tag-girlfriend","tag-incident","tag-kcra","tag-murder","tag-murder-charge-sacramento","tag-next-month","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-sacramento-police","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}