Brain Injury Lawyer Blog

Date: 1/17/2009

DALLAS (AP) — A court may decide this coming week whether to end life support for a 6-month-old Dallas baby who has suffered severe brain damage, dozens of bone fractures and numerous scars, allegedly at the hands of his parents.

A physician noted that David Coronado Jr. had 42 skeletal injuries. His hands and feet appeared to have been pulled, twisted and crushed. His skin injuries included bruises and human bite marks, The Dallas Morning News reported in Saturday editions.

A court-appointed guardian for the boy has filed a motion in Dallas County juvenile court asking that doctors at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas be permitted to remove the boy from life support. The motion says the parents have not consented to withdrawing the support, but it argues that the move is in his best interests.

His parents, David Cesar Coronado Sr., 23, and Ruthy Marie Chabolla, 22, were arrested Dec. 23 on charges of injury to a child. Bail was set at $500,000 each and they remain in jail.

“Both parents are responsible for long-term, extensive physical abuse to their only infant son,” a Child Protective Services report alleged.

Authorities said the couple’s only child wasn’t breathing when they took him to Methodist Dallas Medical Center in December. Hospital staff revived the infant and transferred him to Children’s Medical Center.

Authorities said many of the boy’s fractures had partially healed, indicating they were a few weeks old.

“If he survives his injuries, he will have severe and permanent disability as a result of these injuries,” a doctor wrote in one report, the newspaper said.

The parents have denied deliberately causing any of his injuries. “I would never hurt my child,” Chabolla told police, according to a Child Protective Services report.

Coronado said he may have picked his son up “too hard” in the middle of the night, but said he never hurt David intentionally, the report said.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

Attorney Gordon Johnson
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