An Atlantic City man was ordered held Friday in the beating death of his 1-year-old daughter.

The medical examiner called the injuries to Ayla Brown “one of the worst cases of child abuse he had ever seen,” Assistant Prosecutor Elizabeth White told the judge during a detention hearing.

Imodd Brown Dillihay, 29, is charged with first-degree murder and could face life in prison as a persistent offender eligible for an extended term.

He allegedly waited nine hours before calling 911, after he put his daughter down for her nap and said he could not wake her.

Ayla was found unresponsive Feb. 2, at Metropolitan Plaza, where Brown Dillihay was watching her, along with her brother and sister.

At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, doctors said the injuries only would be possible in a fall from a multi-story building, a high-speed car chase or physical abuse, BreakingAC previously reported.

Ayla died about a week later, 10 days before her second birthday.

The autopsy detailed horrific injuries, including a contusion on the girl’s forehead, abrasions on both sides of her neck and bilateral retinal hemorrhages that the medical examiner called “the worst he had ever seen,” White read.

Brown Dillihay was charged with murder July 25, three days after he was arrested on a warrant for domestic assault on Ayla’s mother, Kaniyah Hopewell.

Video surveillance showed Brown Dillihay push Hopewell up against a wall in the area of Tennessee and Atlantic avenues June 21, according to information given at the detention hearing

Hopewell told police at the time that Brown Dillihay snatched off her necklace and left on a bicycle. Her shirt was ripped to the point where she had to put her jacket on backward to cover herself.

When police saw Brown Dillihay a month later and tried to arrest him, he denied it was him, according to the affidavit of probable cause.

He then ran, but slid on grass, and was arrested, the affidavit states. He was found with 65 pills believed to be ecstasy, resulting in a new case on drug and obstruction charges.

Hopewell later wrote a letter to the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office saying the assault was an isolated event and that the argument escalated due to stress, and she did not want to pursue charges.

But just a month before, Brown Dillihay pleaded to a previous domestic assault on Hopewell, according to the court record.

Hopewell also was one of several people who wrote letters to the court attesting to Brown Dillihay’s character.

“The defendant submitted an impressive array of character letters indicating he is a beloved son, brother, boyfriend and more,” Judge Joseph Levin noted.

Brown Dillihay’s family has rallied around him, including his sister, who sparked outrage from many when she went on Facebook Live to defend her brother after the murder charge was made public July 30.

“It’s not that serious,” Sharde Ragland said at the beginning of the now-deleted video in which she accused people of being “weird as f—” for wishing her brother dead or prison justice after reading of the killing.

She invited people to “say what you have to say” on the Live, but then snapped back when people commented for her to stop and talked of the baby being beaten.

“She didn’t get beat to death, how about that,” Ragland said. “You know that? Was you at the f—ing hospital?”

When comments turned overwhelmingly against her, Ragland deleted the video and a subsequent post in which she tried to explain her reaction.

In arguing for her client’s release Friday, defense attorney Yvonne Maher said she could not dispute the injuries to the little girl.

“My question is this: How did this happen to her?” Maher said, alleging the state “hasn’t provided any clear evidence.”

“We don’t know how this happened,” Maher said. “Was it a tragic accident? Was it an instance of actual physical abuse? He was staying with a girlfriend, so there was another person involved.”

That girlfriend — who has not been named — told investigators that she had left her apartment where Brown Dillihay was watching his three children to take her own child to the doctor. When she returned, Ayla already was napping.

Brown Dillihay told police that the woman was alone with Ayla for only about 10 minutes while he took his other two children to his brother’s, and Ayla was still in bed.

Maher said Brown Dillihay has been cooperative, and even came to the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office to give a voluntary statement Feb. 4, before Ayla was pronounced dead.

Two of his cell phones were seized at that time.

But when he was ordered to give the passcodes to those phones by Judge Pamela D’Arcy, he refused, and is currently remains in contempt of that order, the assistant prosecutor said.

Maher said her client told her he does not remember the passcodes after replacing the phones.

“We heard the ‘I don’t remember them’ excuse before Judge D’Arcy, and she wasn’t buying that either,” White told the judge.

The judge noted that the nature of the charges shift the burden to a presumption of pretrial detention, but that even without the shift, there was “much more than clear and convincing evidence” to hold Brown Dillihay.

He is not expected back in court before the case is presented to a grand jury for indictment.