A Bell County grand jury indicted a Killeen woman Wednesday on a murder charge in the death of her child last year.

Kahtisha McKnight, 25, will face a charge of murder after a Killeen police investigation determined her to be responsible for the death of her 2-year-old daughter by willfully inflicting a violent, physical trauma to the child, resulting in a cracked skull and eventual brain death.

According to the arrest affidavit, a call came in to 911 dispatchers at 10:26 p.m. May 18, 2006. Emergency personnel who arrived at the scene reported that the child, Jameisha McKnight, was unresponsive, and was immediately rushed to Carl. R. Darnall Medical Center on Fort Hood. Shortly thereafter at 11:50 p.m. Killeen police were called to investigate the incident.

Officer Louis Griffin arrived at the hospital to discover that the child had suffered a life-threatening head injury and was being transported to Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Temple, where she was pronounced dead 27 hours later.

Griffin questioned McKnight shortly after arriving, and McKnight gave the first of multiple accounts of the circumstances surrounding her daughter's injuries, the affidavit said.

The only adult home at the time of the incident, McKnight originally said she witnessed her daughter fall backward and hit her head on a dresser. She said her daughter became disoriented, then collapsed.

But according to the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office, the injury was caused by "non-accidental trauma to the head." In an autopsy, the examiners reported that the child had suffered an impact to the back of the head that caused a fracture, leading to severe bleeding into the brain, which eventually shut down all cognitive functions. They also said they discovered other injuries consistent with physical abuse.

The examiner's report ruled the death a homicide because of blunt force trauma to the back of the head which was most likely inflicted by another person and that the amount of force necessary to cause the injuries was much higher than a fall could generate.

Killeen Child Protective Services initiated an investigation in early June, partly because of McKnight's two other children: two boys, ages 4 and 6 months at the time of the incident.

When questioned by Killeen police a second time in June, McKnight gave a different account after hearing that the injuries could not have occurred the way she said they did, the affidavit said. She revised her statement, this time saying that while playing with her daughter, she fell into her, knocking the young girl into a dresser and causing her to fall with greater force. But when Griffin conferred with the medical examiners, they reported that such an impact would not be sufficient to cause the kind of damage sustained by the 2-year-old Jameisha, the affidavit said.

After nearly a two-month investigation in cooperation with Killeen CPS, Killeen police determined that they had enough evidence to charge McKnight. She was arrested June 29, 2006, in connection with the death of her child.