Florida Dad Squeezes Baby Until She Bursts Then Claims She Doesn’t Exist

Florida Dad Squeezes Baby Until She Bursts Then Claims She Doesn’t Exist

This Bartow man is charged with killing his own child after his four-month-old daughter was found with broken ribs, a skull fracture, and her brain was hemorrhaging from blunt force trauma. As we discussed in our Brian Boyer episode earlier this summer, Brian’s death was the third instance where a parent or caregiver has been charged with killing a child in their custody, age four or younger, in Polk County. Today, we’re going to touch on another one of these cases. The victim in today’s story is 4-month-old Willow Kubai, known to her loved ones as Strawberry. Willow lived in Bartow, Florida, with her parents, Rebecca and Jacob Kubai.

February 22nd, 2024, should have been like any normal sunny winter’s day in Central Florida. According to Jacob, he dropped his wife off at the Texas Cattle Company in Lakeland, where she worked, at around 4:55 p.m. with his daughter in tow. Afterwards, the pair stopped at the local Walmart before heading back home for the evening. However, later that night, tragedy struck. Jacob noticed that Willow wasn’t breathing, so the father rushed his infant daughter to the Bartow Regional Medical Center on Osprey Drive, where it was found that she was in cardiac arrest and had no brain activity.

Once stabilized, Willow was airlifted by a helicopter to St. Joseph’s Hospital on West Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Tampa, which boasts its own separate pediatric hospital. Meanwhile, at around 8:30 p.m., emergency room personnel back at the much smaller Bartow Regional Medical Center contacted the Bartow Police Department. Willow wasn’t just in cardiac arrest; she had an array of suspicious injuries. Doctors discovered that the four-month-old had suffered a skull fracture and had multiple layers of bleeding on her brain. She also had 10 broken ribs and multiple bruises and scratches all over her body. Sadly, Willow Kubai only survived for 2 days in this condition before passing away as a result of her injuries. It was clear to all involved that the little girl had been beaten to death.

In the aftermath of Willow’s death, Bartow Police Chief Andy Ray contacted the Polk County Sheriff’s Department for assistance with the investigation. Authorities conducted separate interviews of both Jacob and Rebecca Kubai, but neither parent could explain how Willow obtained her injuries. As we mentioned previously, Rebecca had been at work on the evening of February 22nd. During her interview, the mother responded appropriately when questioned by the authorities.

When Jacob was questioned, however, he reported that he had dropped his wife off at work and then headed to Walmart with Willow at around 6:40 p.m. There was just one problem with the story: when police reviewed the store surveillance footage, little Willow was nowhere to be seen. At no point during the 14 minutes that Jacob was in Walmart does the little girl ever appear on camera. Jacob claimed that prior to the Walmart trip, he played video games for a while. When he went to fix dinner, he discovered he was out of chicken broth, so that was his reason for the trip to the store. He said that he finally fed the little girl around 7:50 p.m. Jacob claimed that he checked on her every 10 minutes and noticed that she wasn’t breathing at 8:10 p.m., which is when he decided to administer CPR.

According to the authorities, Jacob seemed totally normal during his interview. That was until they confronted him with the inconsistencies in his story and the charges that he might face. At that point, he claimed that neither his wife nor his baby were actually real. Allegedly, Jacob showed no emotion or remorse over his baby’s death; he truly believed that his baby did not exist. It was also discovered that on at least two prior occasions, Jacob had left Willow alone without a caregiver. Back in January of 2024, Jacob left Willow sitting in a chair and then took off to Georgia. The infant was by herself for approximately 15 minutes before her mother arrived at home.

Of course, Willow’s postmortem examination told a very different story than what her father claimed. On February 27th, her body was autopsied by the District 10 Medical Examiner’s Office, where it was discovered that the 4-month-old suffered a minimum of 10 blunt force trauma injuries to her forehead alone. She also suffered a swollen and hemorrhaged spine, along with the 10 broken ribs that were discovered at the hospital. Those fractures were in a healing stage and were consistent with Willow being squeezed. According to the medical examiner, and I quote, “Based on the injuries noted, the skull fracture would have been caused by the caregiver at that time.” The cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma of the head. The manner of death was ruled as a homicide.

22-year-old Jacob Joseph Kubai was arrested on March 5th, 2024, and was booked into the South County Jail in Frostproof. He was charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child, aggravated child abuse, and two counts of knowingly abusing a child without bodily harm. These are all felonies in the State of Florida. Although his two lesser charges carry bond amounts of $10,000 each, he is being held without bond for the others, as it was determined that Jacob was a flight risk due to having family ties out of state. It is unclear whether or not Jacob has entered a plea, but he is currently being represented by attorney Al Tarella. It should be noted that Jacob has no history whatsoever of mental illness, as well as no prior criminal record. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

On March 6, 2024, Sheriff Grady Judd and Chief Andy Ray held a press conference regarding the joint investigation between the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and the Bartow Police Department that resulted in Jacob Kubai’s arrest.

“Good afternoon, thank you for being with me today at the Sheriff’s Office while we talk to you about a very significant issue,” Sheriff Judd stated. “But the first one to speak is going to be Chief Andy Ray from the Bartow Police Department, because we assisted Chief Ray, so he will give you the preliminary information, and then I’ll talk to you about the investigative side. Chief, come on up, sir.”

“Thank you. Good afternoon,” Chief Ray began. “My name is Andy Ray—it’s A-N-D-Y R-A-Y—and I’m the Police Chief in Bartow. We’re going to talk to you today about an investigation that started in Bartow. Thursday evening, the 22nd of February, Bartow officers were dispatched to the Bartow Hospital (Bartow Regional Hospital) to a report of a child that was injured and had arrived in cardiac arrest. The first officers on scene made contact in the emergency room with the medical personnel there, and they were working feverishly to save this child’s life. It turns out that the child is a four-month-old little girl. Those officers, being given some information at the scene, then contacted supervision and asked for a detective.”

“Whenever our detectives responded, supervision was notified as well and started an investigation there. Initially, there was not a great opportunity to get a lot of information because the whole team at the emergency room was working to save the child’s life. That was a little bit after 8:30 in the evening on Thursday evening. A medical helicopter was dispatched, and the child was stabilized briefly and then placed on the helicopter and flown to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa. Our detectives went over there along with supervision to get some more details about the investigation and also the status of the child.”

“Once they got there and got some answers, at that point it was obvious that the child had multiple injuries. At that point, I contacted my colleagues at the Sheriff’s Office, spoke with the investigations major, and requested their assistance in the investigation. They then dispatched homicide investigators from the Bureau of Criminal Investigations at the Sheriff’s Office, and they arrived, were briefed, and then took over the investigation at that point. I’m very thankful, as always, for our relationship with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Again, I say it every time, we work very well together here in Polk County. We all know each other, we all appreciate and support each other, and we all respect each other based on the information that we have and the experience that we have. So, I’m thankful for that, thankful for our partnerships, and thankful for the outcome of this investigation. So, I’m going to turn that over now to the Sheriff for the rest of the information.”

After briefly discussing the facts of the case, Chief Andy Ray opened the floor to Sheriff Grady Judd.

“Thank you, Chief. And I ditto that cooperation; that’s how we work here, and we’ve always worked here. We work together, and I have a very experienced homicide team. The blessing is, in the city of Bartow, they very rarely have a homicide, so they call us when they have one. So unfortunately, we get a lot more opportunities to investigate than most other agencies because of the vastness of the Sheriff’s Office. But I want to introduce you to a murderer. To someone who viciously murdered his beautiful 4-month-old baby girl that they refer to as Strawberry.”

“Now, it appears to me that normal society can’t understand this kind of person. Well, I can tell you from a great deal of experience that a lifelong law enforcement officer can’t understand this kind of person either. But here he is: Jacob Kubai. He’s 22 years of age. He and his wife had this baby just four months ago, and on February the 22nd in the evening, Jacob took Mom to work. They dropped her off at the Texas Cattle Company in Lakeland at about 5 minutes to 5:00 in the afternoon, and then he went home with the baby. I might also add that Mom works also at Buffalo Wild Wings, so she’s working two jobs, and Jacob’s staying home with the baby.”

“So he arrives at home, and then at about 20 minutes to 6:00—when he gets back home, he plays video games for a while. He discovers while he’s fixing dinner that he doesn’t have any chicken broth for the food, so he said he took the baby, Strawberry, and went to Walmart.”

Sheriff Judd discussed the trip to Walmart, where Jacob claimed that he’d brought Willow, whom he referred to as Strawberry, but the baby was nowhere to be seen.

“He told us this. Now we pull the video at Walmart. He has no baby. And then we watch him shop, and then he comes through the line to self-checkout with no baby. Then he goes home at about 6:54. So he’s at Walmart less than 10 minutes. He said at 7:50 in the evening, about 7:50, he fed the baby and checked on her every 10 minutes. We thought that was a little strange. At 7:50 fed the baby, checked on her at 8:00, checked on her at 8:10 p.m. He checked on her and found the baby unresponsive. He said he tried CPR. Investigation shows that he gave five compressions. He saw that the baby still was unresponsive, so he grabbed the baby up and drove to Bartow Regional, where the Bartow Police Department was notified, as the Chief said. Then they flew the baby to St. Joe’s, and here’s what they discovered next.”

Sheriff Judd discusses the results of baby Willow’s autopsy: “At autopsy, they discovered many of these injuries as well. They discovered that night that the baby had a skull fracture, that the child had multiple impact bruises to the forehead, that the baby had 10 ribs fractured, that she had a hemorrhage in her spine, and that she had multiple layers of brain bleed. Still, the baby fought for life and lived two more days before she died. Then an autopsy was completed, and at autopsy, it gave the details. Our detectives said they counted a minimum of 10 strikes to the forehead. Did you hear that? The baby was beaten in the forehead at least by 10 different strikes. 10 ribs were fractured, and they said that would have been from a squeezing of the child. In addition to that, this significant skull fracture to the back of the head, the medical examiner said it would have occurred by striking a hard object. The baby was literally beaten to death, and the only person that was home with the baby at the time was Jacob.”

The Sheriff then talked about his department’s interview with Willow’s mother, Rebecca Kubai. “We interviewed Mom, and Mom said the baby had no bruising when she went to work. The baby was not complaining or restless as an infant would be that had significant injuries. It leaves only him.”

Next, Sheriff Judd discusses what went on when his detectives interviewed Jacob. “So our detectives, who are simply the very best on our homicide team, try to talk to him. First, he’s totally lucid. He goes, ‘You know, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ We put him in a cell, told him he was going to be charged eventually with aggravated manslaughter of a child, aggravated child abuse, and then when we took him out of the interview room because he wanted to talk to us some more, he started saying things like, ‘None of this is real. My wife’s not real. My baby’s not real. This is a fantasy.’ It just didn’t happen. He began immediately playing games with us. He showed zero remorse, he shed not one tear, and yet he has literally beaten and squeezed his baby to death at four months old.”

Sheriff Judd noted that while Rebecca responded appropriately for a mother who had just lost her baby, Jacob, on the other hand, showed no remorse, no emotion, nothing. “Mother responded appropriately when she heard of this injury to her child and couldn’t understand how it happened,” Judd said.

Finally, Sheriff Judd opened the floor for questions.

Question: “Was there any other sort of previous history of this happening? I know the baby was only four months old, but were there any other complaints or any other signs?”

Sheriff Judd: “That is still under investigation. We don’t see any previous complaints to DCF, and obviously, we’ve been dealing with the instant injuries and the instant death, and we will follow up with that before this investigation is completed to see if there’s any older injuries. But you know, how much older can injuries be? The baby’s only four months old. So there’s more work to do, more investigation to do. But at this point in the investigation—and we never say never, as you know—we have no investigative information that would lead us to believe the mother participated in this or knew about it. Certainly, if the baby’s healthy when she goes to work, and then she’s called that the baby’s at the hospital unresponsive, she’s got as many questions as you would expect a mother to when she said, ‘I just saw this baby just a couple hours ago when I came to work.’ So while she’s working and trying to make ends meet, this sorry human being is home beating the child.”

Question: “Do we know the time frame of when he would have done this? Was this before he went to Walmart or do we believe that it was after he came home?”

Sheriff Judd: “Well, it’s really subject to the best interpretation of the timeline that the detectives see. They think it was before he went to Walmart, but we’ve not completed the investigation yet. Our supposition is it was before he went to Walmart.”

Question: “Sheriff, are you aware of any mental issues that he’s had previously?”

Sheriff Judd: “No, no previous mental issues, and he was totally lucid and rational until he found out what kind of trouble he was in, and then he didn’t remember anything. Life has become a blank.”

Question: “Criminal history?”

Sheriff Judd: “No criminal history.”

Question: “Sheriff, can you talk about how the injuries were determined to be caused by him and not something, let’s say, environmental when he was at Walmart?”

Sheriff Judd: “Well, certainly when you see these injuries and this baby’s four months old, you know that a baby four months old is not mobile. So when you see 10 separate sets of bruising across the forehead, you see a fracture across the back of the head that the medical examiner said is caused from hitting a hard object, when you see 10 ribs are broken—that’s from either squeezing or beating them in the ribs—when you see that the child had a hemorrhage in the spinal column, that’s just all indicative of a horrific beating.”

Question: “I know that it says here that there was at least one other occasion where this baby was left alone. How is that determined within the investigation, and do you believe that there are more times other than that?”

Sheriff Judd: “That’s still under investigation. Once again, we have other snippets of information that are certainly going to be followed up on, but we have focused on the murder of this child, and then we’ll go back after we get this piece of it done and tie the loose ends of it up. When we release this information to you this soon after an arrest or an investigation, you know, we don’t have the loose ends tied up to the investigation.”

Question: “Did it give you any indication that he just didn’t want the child?”

Sheriff Judd: “Zero. Zero. We all seek answers for this. We all think there’s got to be an answer. There’s got to be a mistake, because nobody could beat a 4-month-old beautiful little girl to death. He can, and he did. Okay, thank you.”

As this case is still developing, we will keep an eye out for updates when they become available—if they become available. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there were not any pictures of Willow that were released to the media, so unfortunately, we have nothing to remember her by other than the tragic details of her death. Willow will never learn to crawl or walk, say her first words, ride a bike, or go to school. She’ll never get to grow up, and that in itself is a tragedy.

“He’s locked up in the county jail, and occasionally you really, really, really see people that, based upon the investigation of the death or the injury, you wonder why God allows them to breathe air. Here’s one that I wonder why God allows him to breathe air,” Judd concluded.