London Sherwood's short life was filled with pain, an autopsy would discover: bleeding in the brain, bruises on her face and neck, fractures to her ribs and legs.

She died three months to the day after she was born. On Dec. 4, she was removed from life support at Children's Hospital in St. Paul. Her father, 21-year-old Justin Alan Schaak of Star Prairie, Wis., is charged with reckless homicide. Court documents accuse him of striking London's head against a bathtub and a bedroom wall.

The baby's death came about three weeks after her mother abandoned her, according to court documents, after it was determined from DNA tests that Schaak was the father. The mother, who wasn't named in the criminal complaint, "had been drinking alcohol and smoking through pregnancy," the complaint said.

"It's just a sad and difficult situation for everybody," Sheriff Dennis Hillstead said Monday.

London's death is an all-too-familiar story in St. Croix County, said Hillstead, who laments why an "ill-prepared" father failed to ask county agencies for help. But Hillstead recalls other recent cases that ended badly as well: a 7-year-old boy beaten to death by his mother's boyfriend for wetting the bed and a 6-month-old child who suffocated when a drinking father covered the toddler with a quilt to stop the crying.

"Most all parents don't wake up in the morning and say they're going to abuse their child today," said Mary Anne Snyder, executive director of the Wisconsin Children's Trust Fund. Influences such as poverty, drugs, alcohol, anger, mental illness and unrealistic expectations of a small child contribute to tragic circumstances, she said. "Here you have a young man possibly trying to take care of this abandoned baby with no backup," she said. "This is not something that comes naturally."

According to court documents, on Dec. 2 an ambulance went to the house in Star Prairie where Schaak was living with his father and his father's girlfriend. Schaak at first told investigators that when London started to cry that afternoon he fed her with a bottle and held her until she fell asleep. He then went downstairs to play video games.

About two hours later, he said, he heard gurgling and found the baby's skin tone was blue.

Schaak at first denied knowing of any injuries to the baby but told a different story a few days later, when two St. Croix County investigators went with him to the house, where he used a doll to re-enact what had happened, according to the complaint. He demonstrated or described instances where he struck London's head on the bedroom wall and another when she slipped out of his hands and hit her head on the bathtub. He also showed how he had shaken London by the legs "because she was screaming and she was fussy and she was squirming around."

London died at 2:30 a.m. Dec. 4. Schaak remained in jail Monday in St. Croix County.

Kevin Giles • 651-298-1554