OAKLAND — A Bay Space couple has been charged with throwing a 4-year-old boy right into a scalding bathe two days after he suffered a extreme blunt pressure trauma damage to his pancreas, courtroom data present.
Terrell Love, 32, and his fiancée, Ashley Ferguson, 33, had been charged Sept. 28 with baby abuse and assault on a toddler inflicting mind damage or paralysis. Moreover, Ferguson is charged with inflicting mayhem on the boy, based on courtroom data. Ferguson, who's in custody on a no-bail maintain, pleaded not responsible on Oct. 13.
Love, the boy’s father, is just not in Alameda County jail and has not but entered a plea, based on courtroom data. A no-bail warrant has been issued for his arrest.
The investigation began when the couple introduced the boy to the UCSF Benioff Kids’s Hospital in Oakland final December, the place medical doctors decided he was affected by extreme burns on roughly 30 p.c of his physique. They stated it was an accident, explaining he’d been showering by himself and should have inadvertently turned the chilly water off, and that they didn’t discover till he began screaming, at which level they rushed him to the hospital, based on courtroom data.
However after a four-month police investigation, authorities concluded that the burning was deliberate. The proof contains interviews with the boy, the place he described struggling “bodily punishment” from Love and Ferguson, in addition to textual content messages the place Ferguson allegedly made “derogatory” remarks concerning the boy, police stated in courtroom data.
Investigators allege in courtroom data that the boy suffered a blunt pressure damage to his pancreas that was doubtlessly life threatening simply two days earlier than the bathe incident, however “was allowed to endure with this life-threatening damage for about two days till he was taken to the hospital after being burned.”
It's additional alleged that Ferguson turned upset with the boy for urinating on himself, so she pinched him and positioned him in a bathe with water temperatures in extra of 130 levels. The boy described this to police and stated Ferguson turned the recent water all the best way up after he complained the bathe was too chilly, based on courtroom data.
On high of the burning and the intense pancreas damage, police stated in courtroom data the boy suffered “intensive traumatic pores and skin accidents (each acute and therapeutic) and intensive bruising to the chest/torso and cheek” which might be nonetheless underneath investigation.