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Dad of Murdered Baby Broke Court Order Banning Unsupervised Visits: Sources

By  Aidan Gardiner and Murray Weiss | February 17, 2017 4:47pm | Updated on February 20, 2017 8:46am

 Nichelle Waring was found unconscious and covered in bruises in her family's Hancock Street home, police said.
Nichelle Waring was found unconscious and covered in bruises in her family's Hancock Street home, police said.
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DNAinfo/Trevor Kapp

BROOKLYN — The father of a 1-month-old girl beaten to death in her home in June was home at the time of the incident — in violation of a court order banning him from being near her without a child welfare worker present, sources said.

Hakeem Waring, 23, had been ordered by a judge to stay away from baby Nichelle Waring and her mother, Kenesha McCroskey, 22, unless he was supervised by a social worker from the Administration for Children's Services, authorities said. The order stemmed from a negligence claim involving another of the couple's children, authorities said.

But when authorities were called to the Hancock Street apartment near Malcolm X Boulevard where Nichelle and McCroskey lived on June 26, 2016 and found the infant unconscious in her crib about 1:40 p.m. with bruises and blood streaming from her nose, Waring was inside without an ACS worker, and had been there for several hours, police said.

After eight months of investigation, the city's Medical Examiner finally ruled little Nichelle's death a homicide on Tuesday — but authorities have yet to charge anyone with her death.

“The tragic death of Nichelle is deeply troubling. ACS is working with NYPD on the ongoing investigation of this homicide,” the agency spokeswoman, Aja Worthy-Davis, said.

Waring had been arrested at the apartment after the girl's death for violating the court order, records show. He was sentenced on Sept. 23, 2016 to six months behind bars and is due to be released next week, on Feb. 25, records show.

His next court date is on March 1, records show.

McCroskey initially told investigators that she had fed Nichelle, lay her in the crib before walking away and returning 45 minutes later to find her unconscious, sources said.

The baby girl was pronounced dead at Woodhull hospital, police said.

Officials first said Nichelle's death wasn't suspicious, but X-rays later showed that she had suffered a hairline fracture to her skull and her ribs had been fractured as well, sources said.

Nichelle's death was ruled a homicide on Tuesday, officials said, but there hadn't been any arrests as of Friday morning.

McCroskey was also arrested after Nichelle's death, but not in connection to the homicide. Police connected her to a credit card fraud case after finding she had stolen a taxi driver's wallet on Oct. 10, 2016, prosecutors said. She used his credit card to buy $212.43 in sneakers from a Times Square Champs but was caught almost immediately, prosecutors said.

McCroskey is being held on Rikers Island on $49,999 bond and due back in court on March 1, jail records show.

She's been arrested 17 times before, sources said.