A 5-month-old girl was found dead in an east Lawrence apartment Friday, and her father was arrested for her death, Lawrence Police said.

Jay Daniel Decker, 26, was booked into Douglas County Jail on suspicion of felony first-degree murder and abuse of a child.

The girl, Risha J. Lafferty, was pronounced dead after police and Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical responded at 8:20 a.m. Friday to a medical call at the Edgewood Homes apartment complex, 1600 Haskell Ave. The child wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse, and efforts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful, Police Capt. Dan Affalter said in a statement issued late Friday night.

An autopsy led investigators to conclude that the toddler died from physical abuse, Affalter said. In addition, the injuries the girl suffered were inconsistent with the explanation Decker gave police, which wasn’t released, Affalter said.

Edgewood resident Stephen Claypool spent Friday morning wondering why there were so many police cars outside the nearby apartment. At midday he found out when he saw an officer place a small bundle or bag on a stretcher. The stretcher was then loaded into a van.

“That just breaks my heart,” Claypool said in an interview Saturday. “Having kids of my own, they mean everything to me.”

Stephen Claypool, who lives in apartment 213 in the Edgewood Homes complex, 1600 Haskell Ave., recalls watching police officers remove the body of a deceased child from an adjacent apartment Friday. Detectives later arrested the 5-month-old child's father, Jay Daniel Decker, 26, for felony first-degree murder and abuse of a child. The apartment where the incident occurred is visible at the center of photograph.

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Claypool said he didn’t know much about the Decker family. He said he’d seen a young girl of about 2 outside the apartment and described her as energetic and happy.

“They just seemed like an ordinary family in Edgewood,” Claypool said.