RALEIGH - DonJuan Cassadary Smith Jr. walked into a Southeast Raleigh apartment Wednesday night carrying an unconscious 2-year-old boy he had been watching for the evening. Smith asked the neighbor whether he could use her telephone to call for help, according to a 911 tape obtained Friday from the Raleigh Police Department.

Smith's neighbor on Hewberry Lane got on the phone first.

"I need an ambulance right away because there's a little boy here. I don't think he's breathing," the neighbor told a dispatcher with the city's emergency communications center.

Smith then got on the phone. "I laid him down, and he was not moving," Smith said. "When I moved him he just noodle-legged."

A short time later police charged Smith with involuntary manslaughter in the toddler's death. Those charges were upgraded late Thursday to first-degree murder of the child, Charvus Dublin.

Smith, 24, who lived one floor below the neighbor at 3320-104 Hewberry Lane, had told the 911 dispatcher he fed the child some pizza and then gave the toddler a bath. After the bath, Smith told the dispatcher, the child began throwing up. Smith said he figured the pizza had made the child sick.

He told the dispatcher he cleaned the boy up and dressed him, but then the child threw up again. Smith said he went to get another diaper and when he got back to the baby, the child had "defecated again."

A second woman at the neighbor's apartment got on the phone with the dispatcher, who asked her whether she saw what happened. Neither woman in the apartment was identified on the 911 tape.

"No sir," the woman said. "I guess this is his daddy. He came in here with the baby in his arms. I thought he was asleep."

The dispatcher told the woman, who was growing distraught, to ask Smith whether the child had choked on something.

"No, sir," the woman answered. "I think this child is dead."

Still, the woman, with the dispatcher coaching her, performed CPR in an effort to revive the child. Smith remained silent, as the woman worked desperately and unsuccessfully to restart the child's breathing and heartbeat.

Emergency workers arrived at the apartment minutes later but were unable to revive the child.

Police spokesman Jim Sughrue said the charges were upgraded after an investigation by the department's Major Crimes Task Force. That investigation is ongoing.

Police have not yet said what caused the death of Charvus, who lived at the downstairs apartment with his mother. Nor have they described the child's relationship to Smith, the mother's boyfriend.

Charvus' death is the first homicide of a toddler or newborn this year in Wake County. But the Triangle has been bedeviled by child slayings in recent years.

During a seven-day period in August, police charged three Triangle men with the deaths of their newborn children. One of the most unusual cases occurred last October, when a seemingly distraught woman, Johni Michelle Heuser, could be heard crying while her mother talked with an emergency dispatcher to report that Heuser's baby daughter, Harmony Jade Creech, was missing. Police later found the baby's decomposing remains and clothing in a diaper box in the attic of the Harnett County home where the 911 call was made. Investigators said the baby had been dead for several weeks, and they charged Heuser with first-degree murder.

Caregiver homicides are rising across the state , according to the N.C. Child Fatality Task Force, a legislative study commission established by the General Assembly in 1991 to determine why children were dying of all causes while making recommendations to lawmakers.

"What used to be 20 a year is now 30 a year," said Tom Vitaglione, chairman of the child fatality task force. "In 2006, the most recent year reported, there were 34, and there has been a rash of them in the Triangle."

Vitaglione said several factors contribute to the killing of small children, including the caregiver's isolation from other family members and overwhelming pressures that might be aggravated by depression and substance abuse.

"No one sets out to be a child killer, but ... sometimes they just snap," Vitaglione said Friday.

Smith made his first court appearance in Wake District Court Friday. He requested a court-appointed attorney. He remained in the Wake County jail without benefit of bail.

(News researcher Lamara Williams contributed to this report.)