PADUCAH, KY – Media Release
Suspect(s): Victoria P. Martin, 40, of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, arrested on a
warrant charging her with murder
Eugene B. Thomas Jr., 68, of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, arrested
on a warrant charging him with first-degree criminal abuse (child 12 or younger)
A woman has been arrested in connection with the death of her infant
daughter late last year.
Det. Danny Slack began investigating after police were called just after 5
a.m. Nov. 28, 2023, to a report of an unresponsive infant. The first officers to arrive
found Victoria Martin holding her one-month-old daughter, and immediately
began performing CPR on the infant. The child was taken by ambulance to Baptist
Health Paducah, where she was pronounced dead due to suffocation.
Martin refused to talk with detectives, but told Department for Community
Based Service (DCBS) workers she was sitting in bed, holding the infant and
eating, about 3 a.m. on Nov. 28. She said she passed out and awoke at 3:40 a.m. to
find the child unresponsive and not breathing. She did not call for help at the time;
another adult in the home called 911 after he awoke about 5 a.m. and learned the
baby was unresponsive.
Slack obtained toxicology results earlier this month that confirmed Martin
was significantly intoxicated at the time. Preliminary autopsy results confirmed
the child died of positional asphyxiation.
Eugene B. Thomas Jr., the infant’s father, was charged with first-degree
criminal abuse. Slack said Thomas knew Martin regularly abuses alcohol, and that
she is supposed to be supervised anytime she is with her other two children, but
he still left the infant and the other children in her care.2
Slack said Martin does not have custody of the two other children, ages 1
and 5, because of previous criminal abuse charges. She was convicted in 2019 of
second-degree criminal abuse after her then-seven-month-old daughter sustained
a fractured skull and brain bleed. She was sentenced to four years in prison.
Martin and Thomas were booked into McCracken County Regional Jail.
