At around 11:30 PM on April 11, 2019, dispatchers with the Wichita, Kansas Police Department received a 9-1-1 call from a concerned citizen claiming that their neighbors were fighting. The caller, Shannon Higgins, told dispatchers:
“I was standing out on my porch. I heard very violent yelling, and then I heard people striking each other and yelling and screaming, and I still hear a woman screaming. Whatever is going on in that house is not good right now.”
Shannon later went on to state that he turned around to head back to his house when he heard a woman wailing in such a way that made his stomach sink. Then, he observed a man pushing a woman inside their trailer and shutting the door.
These neighbors in question were 26-year-old Patrick Robert Jovanovic and his girlfriend, 22-year-old Brandy Kai Marchant. The couple resided at the Riverside Mobile Home Park in the 4500 block of South Hydraulic Avenue in Wichita, and had just moved in a few months prior.
The couple was well known to the Wichita Police Department. In fact, over the past year and a half, officers had responded to calls about the family 22 times. Many of those calls were placed when the family lived at their previous address in the Oakview neighborhood on the 4900 block of Jade Avenue. Between November of 2017 and April of 2019, dispatchers received calls from concerned neighbors, Patrick’s mother Donna Lloyd, and even the couple themselves. Several of the calls were in regard to Brandy threatening to take her own life; in one such incident, a pregnant Brandy allegedly held a knife to her own throat.
In March of 2018, Donna Lloyd placed a call regarding Brandy. She told dispatchers:
“She slapped my 11-month-old grandbaby. You guys came out and didn’t do a damn thing about it. That baby was over here for two days with her fingerprints on his face when he’s 11 months old. She needs some kind of psychotic help, there’s something wrong with her, and this is not healthy for my grandbaby. He’s just a one-year-old.”
On February 3, 2019, a call was placed, and dispatchers overheard Patrick and Brandy in the middle of a heated argument. There was cursing, accusations of infidelity, and sounds of a scuffle. When officers responded to their home shortly after, the couple claimed that they had been fighting about money. Brandy also claimed that she was bipolar and off her meds due to a lapse in her state-provided insurance coverage.
In another recorded call from January 20, 2018, Patrick Jovanovic called 9-1-1 about his fiancée, Brandy Marchant: “I need to call to 4957 South Jade. My fiancée just put a knife to her throat and is trying to…” That was just one of 18 calls to the same home since January 2018. Many calls also came from Brandy: “My boyfriend tried to test me, and I pissed him off, and I made him hit his head on the wall, okay? And I smacked my son earlier.”
We know Zayden was living in the home with them at the time; he was just 11 months old when that call was made. It’s clear domestic violence was a common theme between Marchant and Jovanovic. Another call from June of 2018 captures Brandy saying: “No, no, I’m going to my mother’s where I’m safe. You can leave me alone now.” Marchant’s mental health was also a constant concern, like in a call from Patrick in September of 2018: “I have no clue. All I know is she told me… she sent me a message and said ‘I did it, the last…'”
The final and most alarming call came from the same address in February of that year, just two months before Zayden died.
The Wellness Check and Despicable Discovery
Officers, who weren’t surprised by the call, made their way over to the couple’s trailer. When they arrived on the scene, they found Patrick and Brandy walking about the trailer park. There are conflicting reports as to what they were arguing about; some claimed the two began to fight because Brandy was sleeping the day away due to the fact that she was annoyed with her son, Zayden, who had been crying non-stop the day prior. However, other reports claim that the argument stemmed from some frivolous need to go to the gas station. Brandy, who was in shorts, complained that she was cold but refused to move the interview indoors because she claimed that her house was a mess.
However, because the police became aware that the couple had children inside, they opted to do a wellness check. Patrick agreed to let the officers in, but only if they agreed not to wake them. Inside of their tiny trailer, Patrick and Brandy lived with two of their children: two-year-old Zayden and his four-month-old brother, Ty. Patrick was not the father of the baby, which gave credence to the accusations of infidelity heard on the previous 9-1-1 calls. In fact, Ty’s father was a man by the name of Julius Cassura. At the time of his birth, the little boy was born with meth in his system, but for whatever reason, Child Protective Services (CPS) allowed Brandy to retain custody. In addition, Brandy had two older sons that she did not have custody of, and Patrick had an older daughter who would visit on weekends from time to time.
Once inside, officers allegedly heard a baby cooing and found Ty wedged under a pillow on the side of his crib. Allegedly, the crib was loaded with pillows and stuffed animals. One would think that with Ty being Brandy’s fourth child, she’d know that such items are hazardous to infants and could cause them to suffocate, but Brandy wasn’t exactly Mom of the Year.
At the same time, another officer located Zayden, who was laying face down in his Pack ‘n Play. He was surrounded by his own vomit, his tiny body was wrapped tightly in a beige blanket, and he was cold to the touch. In fact, his temperature was only 94.9°F and Zayden wasn’t responding. After the officer unwrapped him from his blanket, they found an even more troubling scene. Zayden was wearing footie pajamas—like the Carter’s style ones with the zipper down the front—but his arms weren’t inside the sleeves. Instead, the sleeves had been tied tightly in a knot around the two-year-old’s throat.
The officers removed the pajamas and observed that Zayden’s tiny body was littered with bruises of all colors—black, blue, purple, green. This proved that he had sustained injuries over time; some were fresh, some were healing. He was also severely malnourished. The officers used baby wipes to clear Zayden’s airway and attempted CPR, but he was already gone. When emergency services arrived, they pronounced Zayden Jovanovic dead at 12:01 AM.
The Autopsy and Toxic Environment
Ty was taken to the hospital, where it was observed that he was notably small for his age. After being weighed, the doctor stated that he weighed a mere eight pounds. According to medical statistics, the average weight of a four-month-old baby boy is 15 pounds, 7 ounces. Ty weighed about as much as your average newborn. Additionally, Ty too was covered in bruises much like his older brother. He had a bruise on his left ear and a swollen jaw, which was consistent with Donna Lloyd’s complaints that Brandy was slapping her baby. He also had two healing rib fractures which doctors believed were about two weeks old, in addition to a severe diaper rash that in turn caused Ty to have a yeast infection.
At autopsy, Zayden was found covered with abrasions and contusions in addition to the extensive bruising, many of which were located on his head and torso. The abrasions on his face looked similar to the ones you might get if someone was holding a pillow over your face. As one doctor put it, his face was being forced down onto something by someone pushing on the back of his head.
As we mentioned before, Zayden was extremely malnourished. The average two-year-old boy weighs roughly 27 pounds; in Zayden’s case, he only weighed just under 15 pounds at the time of his death, closer to what his four-month-old baby brother should have weighed. Most shockingly, toxicology tests indicated that crystal meth was found in the little boy’s brain. His tiny body was already starting to decompose, which indicated he’d been left in that state for several hours at the very least. In the end, the medical examiner concluded that Zayden died as a result of dehydration and malnutrition, and the manner of death was ruled a homicide.
He was laid to rest in the White Chapel Memorial Gardens in Wichita beneath a granite gravestone. Engraved on it was a teddy bear holding two balloons and the inscription: “In loving memory, Zayden Patrick Jovanovic, ‘Bubba’, March 8, 2017 to April 11, 2019.”
Excuses and Legal Outcomes
Patrick Jovanovic and Brandy Marchant were arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree homicide, two counts of child abuse, and one count of aggravated child endangerment. A second child endangerment charge was later added due to the fact that the couple had starved baby Ty. The two were taken to the Sedgwick County Jail and held on a $200,000 bond. On June 9, 2019, Patrick was attacked by inmate Lawrence Brown and had to undergo brain surgery due to his injuries.
At her arraignment on September 9, 2019, Brandy pled not guilty, and Patrick did the same the following day. Due to his head injuries from the jail attack, Patrick’s attorney, Tricia Atwater, requested a mental evaluation, and he was initially deemed incompetent to stand trial, being sent to Larned State Hospital, the largest psychiatric facility in the state of Kansas.
On the topic of both of the little boys being starved, officers who arrived on the scene noted the absolute absence of food in Patrick and Brandy’s trailer. In fact, the cupboards and fridge were totally bare. But of course, Patrick and Brandy contested this fact. According to Patrick, he fed Zayden the morning the police responded to their trailer before he headed off to work. He claimed he did not see him after work that same day, so he had no clue, allegedly, that his two-year-old son was lying dead in his Pack ‘n Play, slowly decomposing.
According to Brandy, she and Zayden had allegedly been “under the weather” for several days, so she restrained him inside of his own pajamas so that he couldn’t escape his Pack ‘n Play and cry at the door. Apparently, Zayden had been crying a lot, and this annoyed the mother. The day prior, Brandy had sent the following text to Patrick:
“I am losing it. I need to stay somewhere. Zayden just won’t stop. I can’t even watch effing TV, and he had three bags of oatmeal and two things of yogurt and he is still screaming.”
She claimed that on the morning of the incident, she went to bed at around 6:00 AM and slept throughout most of the day, and much like Patrick, had no idea that her son was dead.
In the wake of Zayden’s death, his little brother Ty was taken into custody by CPS, and thankfully, he made a full recovery. You might be asking yourself, where was his father, Julius Cassura, during all of this? Well, up until Zayden’s death, Brandy had been playing games, not allowing Julius access to his son and causing a ton of drama. He wasn’t even sure that Ty was his child until a paternity test was completed. He didn’t even get to see Ty at the hospital initially because Brandy didn’t put his name on the birth certificate. According to the father: “I had no clue. Regardless if it was my son or not, if I was aware of any of that, I would have reported it. I would have done something. Brandy didn’t strike me as the kind of person that would do anything like this.” Julius, who goes by the name “Juice” on Facebook, appears to have several children that he loves and cares for very much as a single dad. As of 2020, Julius finally regained full custody of his little boy.
In July of 2022, Patrick Jovanovic and Brandy Marchant pled guilty to the reduced charges of second-degree reckless homicide, aggravated kidnapping, and child abuse (as Patrick had eventually become well enough to stand trial). As part of their deal, they were sentenced to 322 months (nearly 27 years) in prison. They will also have to register as violent offenders upon release. At the time of their sentencing, Brandy was 26 years old and Patrick was 31. If they serve all of their time, they will be 53 and 58 years old at release, and will still get to live out their lives in freedom, even though they brutally stole Zayden’s.
