Oklahoma QAnon #SaveOurChildren Follower Charged with Murdering Girlfriend’s Baby

CANADIAN COUNTY, OKLAHOMA – A man in Oklahoma who follows QAnon and the hashtag slogan #SaveOurChildren on Facebook is charged with murdering his girlfriend’s infant daughter.

Josh Jennings was looking after 10-month-old Paisley Cearly Jennings’ girlfriend, the baby’s mother, noticed the baby had suffered from multiple significant injuries, including some previous injuries, KFOR reported.

The mother drove baby Paisley to an emergency clinic on Friday but the baby later died on Saturday.

“Upon talking to the doctor, there’s no way the injuries could have occurred accidentally,” Oklahoma City Police MSgt. Gary Knight said.

Jennings was arrested on child abuse charges at first but it’s now been upgraded to first-degree murder after baby Paisley died.

Josh Jennings’ Facebook was filled with the “Save Our Children” hashtag which has been linked to the QAnon conspiracies and its unproven theories about child trafficking. Jennings had also made several posts that condemned physical and sexual child abusers.

UPDATE: The case moved from arrest to a final reckoning over the next several years. Prosecutors with the Canadian County District Attorney’s office, led by Assistant District Attorney Austin Murrey, charged Joshua Paul Jennings with first-degree murder on October 20, 2020, alleging he caused the infant’s death by willfully and maliciously inflicting mortal wounds. Investigators established that Jennings was the only adult caring for Paisley at the apartment near Southwest 5th Street and Mustang Road — an address that carries a Yukon designation but sits within Oklahoma City limits — when she sustained the fatal injuries.

Jennings told his defense attorney, Michael Amend, that the baby had become tangled in a blanket, jerking his arm and causing her to fall to the floor, and that her death was an accident. Medical professionals rejected that account outright. A child abuse specialist and treating physicians concluded that Paisley’s injuries were the result of non-accidental trauma to the head and were inconsistent with the explanation Jennings provided, and doctors also documented evidence of older injuries to the child.

After a three-day trial in September 2022, a Canadian County jury deliberated for roughly an hour before finding Jennings guilty of first-degree murder. Although Oklahoma law allowed jurors to consider the death penalty or life with the possibility of parole, they recommended the harshest non-capital option: life in prison without the possibility of parole. The defense filed a motion for a new trial, which the court denied, and on January 17, 2023, District Judge Jack D. McCurdy II formally imposed the life-without-parole sentence after hearing victim impact statements.

Jennings appealed, raising nine separate claims of error and arguing his conviction violated both the U.S. and Oklahoma constitutions. On April 11, 2024, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously rejected every proposition and affirmed both the first-degree murder conviction and the life sentence, finding no errors by the trial court. The ruling closed out the legal proceedings against the man whose social media presence had been steeped in #SaveOurChildren posturing even as he stood accused of beating to death the child placed in his care.