A Florida man is facing a manslaughter charge after prosecutors say he left his three-month-old godson alone with a bottle propped against a stuffed animal, a setup that ended in the infant’s death.
Dane Edwards, 23, is charged with manslaughter by aggravated child abuse in the death of baby Skylar Fisk. He was arrested in Missouri and extradited back to Florida, according to local NBC affiliate WESH.
A probable cause affidavit reviewed by Law&Crime states that deputies with the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office were called to an apartment complex in the 3200 block of Meridius Place around 11:40 a.m. on March 5, 2024, after reports of an unresponsive baby.
Paramedics took Skylar to a hospital, where he later died. It took investigators more than two years to build the case against Edwards.
At the hospital, doctors found what they described as a large amount of milk formula in the boy’s esophagus, leading them to suspect he had aspirated. Officers who responded to the scene discovered a stuffed toy sloth on the floor of the baby’s room, with a bottle tied around its arms.
Skylar’s mother told detectives she had been in the shower at the time and had left Edwards, the boy’s godfather who lived in the household, watching him. She said she had told everyone in the home not to use the stuffed animal to feed Skylar because she worried he could choke. She also noted that Skylar had recently seen a doctor and had been given a clean bill of health.
When she got out of the shower, the mother said she heard Edwards running through the apartment with Skylar in his arms, yelling that the baby wasn’t breathing. She began CPR while formula came out of the infant’s mouth and nose, the affidavit states.
Edwards told investigators he had fed Skylar around 8 a.m., then put him in a baby swing and turned on videos for him to watch on a laptop. He said he set the bottle on the floor at that point. He told police that when he checked on Skylar around 11:30 a.m., the baby was blue and not responding.
During questioning, detectives asked Edwards to reenact how he had fed the baby, using a doll. When he lifted it, the doll’s head snapped backward, and Edwards reportedly laughed and said, “I killed it.” He then showed officers how he normally cradled Skylar while feeding him — before allegedly admitting that he had also used the stuffed sloth to prop the bottle up to the baby’s mouth while he was in the swing.
Edwards claimed Skylar was strong enough to have pushed the bottle away himself, but investigators said that wasn’t possible given the baby’s age. “The timeline shows that at least an hour passed during which Skylar was left with an 8-ounce feeding bottle propped up by a stuffed sloth toy, unsupervised, demonstrating a reckless disregard for human life,” they wrote.
Edwards reportedly pushed back on detectives, insisting he had propped bottles that way “all the time.” He then grew combative, telling officers that if he was going to be “grilled” about his “dead f—ing son,” he wanted a lawyer. Still, before the interview ended, he seemed to accept some blame, allegedly saying, “If this falls on anyone, it’s me.”
An autopsy completed in October 2025 confirmed milk-based formula in Skylar’s lungs. Investigators called the death preventable.
“Dane Edwards, through culpable negligence, caused the premature death of Skylar Fisk by propping a feeding bottle with a stuffed toy and leaving the infant unattended for an extended period of time,” detectives wrote in the affidavit. “By his own admission, he knew the practice was unsafe and could result in death. This reckless conduct demonstrated a gross disregard for human life and directly resulted in Skylar’s death.”
An arrest warrant was issued in May, and Edwards was booked into the Osceola County Jail on Tuesday following his arrest in Missouri. No court date had been set as of this report.
In his obituary, Skylar is remembered as having “passed peacefully” at home. Edwards is referred to in the obituary as an “uncle.” “He spent his life surrounded by those who loved him, residing with Mommy, Daddy, Uncle Dane Edwards, Uncle Anthony Fisk, and Uncle Michael Slater, with visits from Gigi, Mimi, and Grammy as often as possible,” the obituary reads.
