UPDATE 7/12/08 – Clarissa Pierce, 22, has been charged with felony child neglect for failure to seek medical help for her two year old son Nicholas for five days while the child suffered with second and third degree burns over 50% of his body. The burns were inflicted by John Cellner, Pierce’s boyfriend. Pierce is being held in the Ottawa County Jail on $150,000 bond.
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Wyandotte, OK – John Cellner thought he could pass it off as a radiator gone wrong. Cellner, 23, is accused of burning his girlfriend’s two-year-old son, Nicholas, from neck to knees, front and back. The toddler has third degree burns, some of which have already required skin grafts. Even worse? It took five days for the child to get medical help. Five days, people. How do you look a baby in the face and just decide not to get him help for excruciating trauma for FIVE DAYS?
The child’s name is being withheld (edit: the child’s name is Nicholas.), but I think his mother’s name is Clarissa, unless John’s got a new girlfriend. (edit : it is Clarissa. She’s now been charged as well.) On June 27, the little boy was somehow scalded so severely that his skin peeled off – he had second and third degree burns over fifty percent of his body. And yet nobody took Nicholas to a doctor. It wasn’t until he was taken to the Sunshine Clinic in Miami, Oklahoma on July 2 that anything at all was done for the little boy.
At the clinic, it was quickly obvious there was a big problem. Staff had Nicholas transferred to a hospital in Tulsa and then hotlined the family. The toddler was treated in the burn unit of the Tulsa hospital while investigators talked to the mother and to Cellner. Cellner first said that he opened a radiator cap and the contents sprayed the child, but that didn’t work based on the burn patterns, so investigators went out to look at Cellner’s vehicle. They didn’t see anything wrong with it.
Cellner’s story started changing. He couldn’t keep it straight. The latest and apparently final version is that he took off the radiator cap, it sprayed the child, and he responded to the spray by grabbing Nicholas and holding him under scalding water for “between three and fifteen minutes” because…. get this… he “didn’t know the water was hot.”
Yeah, he’s a genius, that John Cellner. But don’t paint all Okies with the same brush, because the Ottawa County Sheriff’s office had the good sense to call bullshit on the steamiest pile in Wyandotte. John Cellner was arrested on Thursday and charged with felony child abuse. He’s being held in the Ottawa County Jail on $250,000 bond.
UPDATE - On Friday, July 11, charges were filed against the child’s mother, Clarissa Pierce. Pierce, 22, has been charged with felony child neglect for failure to seek medical help for Nicholas for five days while the child suffered with second and third degree burns over 50% of his body. Pierce is being held in the Ottawa County Jail on $150,000 bond.
Tags: Burning, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Clarissa Pierce, John D. Cellner, Oklahoma, Ottawa, scalding, Wyandotte
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