ELMHURST — The young mom accused of smothering her 11-month-old baby to death with a bedsheet after reaching "breaking point" said she was "in shock" and cleaned the child's room with his body in it instead of calling 911.
Nicole Kelly, 22, spoke to DNAinfo New York from inside Elmhurst Hospital, where she is being held after being charged with second-degree murder in the death of her son, Kiam Felix Jr.
Kelly, a home health aide, said she "[cries] most of the day."
"I see my son when I'm sleeping," she said. "I'm very emotional because I miss my son and also I don't know what's going to happen to me."
Kelly is accused of wrapping her son in a bedsheet, watching him as he struggled to breathe and then failing to call for help for hours after he turned blue in the July 6 incident at her home at 52nd Avenue and 94th Street, according to the District Attorney's office.
Kelly allegedly told police she had reached her "breaking point" as her son's primary caretaker, but said she would never hurt him, only changing her story that it was an accident under police questioning.
"That is true, but that wouldn't lead me to do anything to my son," she said. "I love my son and I would never do anything to hurt him."
In a tragic twist, Kelly dressed the boy, who was just weeks shy of his first birthday on July 29, in his white christening suit to bring him to the hospital along with the boy's father, Kiam Felix, 22.
"That's the only nice stuff he had," she said.
According to the mom, she left Kiam on her bed when she went to take a shower. When she got out around 12:30 p.m., she found that he had "rolled over on his sheet and he suffocated," she said.
"I came out of the shower I saw him and I was in shock so I didn't know what to do," she added.
Kelly, who rented a room inside a first-floor apartment, said she though Kiam was "sleeping."
"I'm not really good at taking pulse so I didn't really take his pulse," she said.
"I just stayed in the room and tidied up the stuff that was in there," she continued. "I was tidying up the room and getting his stuff together and I was getting myself dressed."
Kelly said she knew she should have done more, but she was "in shock."
"I really didn't get to the phone to call 911 even though I know I should have, but I didn't," she said.
Around 3 p.m., she called her son's father, Kiam Felix, 22, who eventually accompanied her to the hospital.
But Felix said he received a call from Kelly around 1 p.m. and urged her to call for help.
"I told her to call 911, and she said she would when she got off the phone with me," Felix said.
When he called her back a few minutes later, he said Kelly told him they were at the hospital. But when he asked to speak to a doctor she said she couldn't put him on the phone.
"I knew something was up," he said, so he got on the train to Queens.
Kelly denied speaking to the boy's father that early and said at a later point in the interview that she only noticed that her son had suffocated around 3 p.m.
Felix had seen the pair the night before, spending the day with Kelly and their son, who he called "Junior," at his Brooklyn home, he said.
"He was chilling with me. I fed him Chinese food," he said. "I made him laugh, I gave him a bath."
Felix said he rushed to Kelly's apartment and found her inside with their son, dressed all in white.
He said he asked her why she hadn't taken him to the hospital, and she broke down, telling him she didn't know what to do, he said.
He called his father to take them to the hospital, clutching his son's lifeless body to his chest on the way there, he said.
Felix is not considered a suspect in the boy's death, according to the NYPD. The child's exact cause of death has not been determined.
The young dad said he didn't see enough of his son during his short life and wished Kelly had told him she was having trouble.
"I could have took him if she felt like she couldn't take care of him," he said. "She didn't say that on the 5th. She didn't say nothing."
