BREMERTON, Wash. -- A man was arrested Monday in the assault of a two-year-old boy that resulted in a critical brain injury and subsequent death, the Kitsap County Sheriff's Department said.
Police said a man had been looking after five children, all under the age of 5, in an apartment in East Bremerton on Monday night. Medics responded the apartment after receiving a call from a man, later identified as the fiancé of the boy's mother, who reported that a child had possibly suffered a seizure.
The boy, who was unresponsive, was transported to Harrison Medical Center in critical condition with a severe head injury.
The man told police that the boy fell, hitting his head on a night stand. Doctors who examined the boy, who had since been transferred to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital, told detectives that the boy's injuries could not have been received by falling on a night stand.
"Had the child been riding unrestrained in the back seat of a vehicle that was involved in a head-on collision, causing the child to fly through the front windshield head-first, he would have sustained a less serious injury that he had received," a doctor told police.
The boy died Tuesday night at 10:18 p.m. at Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma.
After further questioning Monday night, sheriff's detectives arrested the man and booked him into jail on charges of suspicion of first-degree assault of a child. The Kitsap County Prosecutor's Office will determine if the man will face additional or amended charges regarding the death of the child.
The man is scheduled to appear in Kitsap County Superior Court at 3:00 p.m. on Thursday.
Kitsap County Sheriff's deputies and Child Protective Services case workers took the four remaining children into protective custody. The children have been placed into temporary foster homes.
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