Texas Infant Dies Of Head Injury After Mother, Boyfriend Repeatedly Abuse Him, Refuse Medical Help

A Texas man was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment Monday (April 13) in connection with the death of his girlfriend’s infant son.

In June 2015, police and medics responded to a home in the 1800 block of East 25th Street after receiving a report stating a child was facing difficulty in breathing. The child was rushed to a local hospital where he died. An autopsy revealed the child had a skull fracture.

Madison Rodriguez, the mother of the child, was detained for interrogation during which she said she threw the boy to the floor during an argument with her boyfriend, Charles D. Flournoy. Following this, the boy had stopped eating. Despite knowing that the boy was having problems, she said she didn’t seek medical help as she wanted to avoid paying expensive medical bills.

Meanwhile, Flournoy told the officers that the one-year-old child, who was not his biological son, had been injured several times under his care. He said he had dropped the child once and also left him on the bathroom counter unattended following which the boy fell off.

Both of them were taken into custody. In February this year, Rodriguez was sentenced to 50 years in prison after she was found guilty of aggravated assault and domestic violence with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily injury.

On April 13, her boyfriend was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for pleading guilty to injury to a child causing serious bodily injury.

In a similar incident last month, a man in Michigan killed his girlfriend’s eight-month-old son by forcibly hitting him against a table. Police arrived at a home after receiving a call from the boy’s mother stating that she found her son lying unresponsive in his crib.

The responding officers rushed the boy to a local hospital where he died. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. Investigation revealed that Jermaine Abron, the woman’s boyfriend, grabbed the boy “out of his crib by his leg and forcibly hit him against objects in the room such as a table and dresser.” The accused was charged with felony murder and first-degree child abuse.