Posted 11:56 pm Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Doctor Testifies 3-Year-Old Girl Had 33 Injuries
By DAYNA WORCHEL
Staff Writer
Staff Writer
Emergency room personnel who treated a 3-year-old girl who prosecutors said was beaten by her mother's boyfriend testified Tuesday the child had more than 30 injuries, was malnourished and was so dehydrated she could not cry.
Dr. Daniel Baber, an emergency room doctor who treated the girl, said his first thoughts upon seeing her were that she must be a victim of child abuse.
"She had 33 separate injuries that were in various stages of healing," he said as he described the girl's examination in court. Her hair was thin and brittle and patches of it were missing, he said.
An emergency room nurse also testified the child had to be given several containers of saline solution intravenously before her body made enough tears to be able to cry.
The testimony came in the first day of the trial for Cody Lane Davis, 27, of Winnsboro. He is charged with one count of injury to a child, a first-degree felony that can bring either bring probation or up to a life sentence if he is convicted.
He is accused of beating the girl, who was in his care in March, so severely that she suffered a brain hemorrhage and is now permanently blind, according to information presented in Judge Christi Kennedy's courtroom Tuesday morning. The child and her two young siblings currently are in separate foster homes.
The 3-year-old was airlifted to Children's Hospital in Dallas because of the severity of her injuries.
Malesha Johnson, 22, the mother of the 3-year old girl cried Tuesday afternoon while testifying that she never noticed the bruises, injuries and emaciated condition of her daughter before she took her to the emergency room in March.
Ms. Johnson, who pleaded guilty to two counts of injury to a child in September, testified Tuesday that she worked nights as a stripper at the Timeout Club in Tyler, and Davis watched her three young children for her.
Ms. Johnson will be sentenced on Feb. 10, according to the Smith County website. She has been held in the Smith County jail since May on bonds totaling more than $1 million.
Ms. Johnson and Davis lived together in Whitehouse after moving from New York in order to be closer to Davis' family, Ms. Johnson testified.
"I didn't interact much with the kids -- I worked from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. during the week, and when I came home, I went to bed," she said in response to questioning from prosecutor Whitney Tharpe about how she could miss that her child was so thin and had missing patches of hair from her head.
Ms. Tharpe showed photos to the jury of the 3-year-old with her face covered in temporary tattoos. Ms. Johnson said Davis put the tattoos on the girl's face and stomach "for fun."
"As soon as the tattoos washed off, more would appear," Ms. Johnson said.
Ms. Johnson told the jury that on the morning of March 28, she went to wake her daughter to give her something to eat. "She looked at me and wouldn't move," Ms. Johnson testified as she began to cry.
She said in court that she thought Davis had told her that he cut the child's hair so that he could place Band-Aids on the child's scalp. Ms. Johnson also testified that Davis told her she cut her head after she fell off a cardboard box onto a pointed toy.
Ms. Johnson said because the child felt cold to the touch that morning, Davis put her in the shower with him to warm her up. The couple then took the child to East Texas Medical Center in Tyler.
Defense attorney Greg Waldron called the situation a "tragedy" during his opening statements to the jury, and discussed how the child's mother already had pleaded guilty to the charge of injury to a child. He told the jury how his client had full responsibility for the three young children as their mother worked at night. Davis was not the biological father of any of the children.
"You will hear allegations of unsupervised children, filthy living conditions -- she didn't even notify the children's father that they had left (New York)," Waldron said.
He told the jury if they were to focus on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that they would find Davis not guilty.
Testimony continues today.
