Just over four months after being violently shaken by her father and suffering a severe brain injury, Emily Paige Williams’ brief time on Earth came to an end.

The infant passed away shortly after 10 p.m. on Friday, April 12. She had been removed from a ventilator earlier that day.

“We all miss her dearly,” said Emily’s mother, Kayla Rose Rziemkowski, 24.

Prior to her injuries, Rziemkowski said Emily, who was born on Oct. 5 last year, was a “happy” baby.

“She was always smiling,” Rziemkowski said. “She was never a colicky baby like my other two kids.”

In light of Emily’s death, her father, Christopher Scott Williams, 26, of Oxford, is now facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life behind bars for murder.

Williams is lodged at the Woodland Center Correctional Facility in Whitmore Lake. The earliest he’s scheduled for release is Dec. 7, 2027. The latest is Dec. 7, 2068.

On April 2, Williams was sentenced to nine to 50 years in prison after previously pleading no contest to first-degree child abuse in Oakland County Circuit Court.

Sheriff’s Det. Shane Freiberg, of the Oxford Township substation, is in the process of seeking a felony murder charge against Williams.

Felony murder is a special category that exists for murders committed while perpetrating or attempting to perpetrate a number of crimes, including first-degree child abuse. Conviction of felony murder comes with the same penalty as first-degree murder – mandatory life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Freiberg explained that charging Williams with felony murder would not be considered double jeopardy.

“Double jeopardy is for the same crime,” he said. “This is two different crimes. (The first) was child abuse. Now, it’s murder.”

Emily had been relying on a ventilator to breathe and receiving nourishment through a tube since Williams shook her on Dec. 7 in their home on Chinkapin Rill in the Lake Villa Manufactured Home Community.

According to the Oakland County Sheriff’s report, Williams admitted to shaking his daughter, then demonstrated to investigators how hard he did it. He told them he “did not mean to hurt her” and “just wanted her to stop crying,” the report stated.

Rziemkowski still can’t comprehend why Williams abused Emily that day. She said prior to that, he was “a wonderful dad” who “never hurt” their other two daughters, who will turn 2 and 3 in a few months.

“That’s why I don’t understand why he (did) it to Emily,” Rziemkowski said. “He was a good father.”

Back in December, the attending physician in the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit told investigators Emily had sustained “non-accidental trauma” to her brain, which resulted in bleeding and severe swelling. The doctor called it a “very clear” case of “child abuse” and said “the mechanism of injury was likely a violent and forceful shaking,” according to sheriff’s report.

Emily was in the hospital from Dec. 7 through Jan. 28, according to Rziemkowski. Day after day, night after night, Rziemkowski stayed by Emily’s side, keeping a watchful eye over her little girl.

With the exception of two nights when she had to tend to her other daughters while they were ill, Rziemkowski said she “never left that hospital.”

“I was always with Emily,” she said.

Rziemkowski hopes people will learn from what happened to Emily. If a person is feeling stressed, angry or frustrated because of a crying child, she said the best thing to do is “put the baby down” and “walk away.”

Afterward, Rziemkowski said the person should either call for help or just let the baby “cry itself to sleep.” The important thing is to not harm the child. “You shouldn’t ever shake a baby,” Rziemkowski said.