In this Jan. 28, 2008 file photo, China Arnold sits in a Montgomery County courtroom during a break in jury selection in Dayton, Ohio. A mother intentionally put her month-old daughter in a microwave oven and cooked the child to death, a prosecutor said Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008, during closing arguments of the woman's retrial. "She could have stopped it with one finger, but she didn't," Assistant Montgomery County prosecutor Daniel Brandt said.

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) _ A mother intentionally put her month-old daughter in a microwave oven and cooked the child to death after a fight with her boyfriend, a prosecutor told jurors Thursday.



Defendant China Arnold and her boyfriend had argued over whether he was the biological father, Assistant Montgomery County prosecutor Daniel Brandt said during closing arguments in the woman's three-week retrial. The argument got so intense that Arnold bit her boyfriend's lip and he slapped her, Brandt said.



Arnold later told a cellmate she put the infant in the microwave and turned it on because she was worried her boyfriend would leave her if he found out the child wasn't his, Brandt said.



"She could have stopped it with one finger, but she didn't," he said. "We know she used that microwave as the instrument of death.