A Pennsylvania mother and her boyfriend have been charged with abuse and endangerment connected to the death of her 3-year-old son.
Allegheny Police said they were called to the home early Wednesday afternoon for a report of a child not breathing. Devin Goodson was taken to a hospital but died less than an hour later.
Court documents say that the boy’s mother, 23-year-old Lagomau Malu, told police she found the boy unresponsive at about noon, began chest compressions and called 911.
Doctors found multiple bone fractures which they said was “indicative of significant level of a violence,” WTAE said. There were also both healing and active fractures.
Police said that Malu admitted abusing her son during an interview. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, she initially said she didn’t know what happened but then admitted “hitting him in the face two to three times” because he wet himself the night before his death. She said he screamed and fell down, so she put him in a diaper and then to bed. He was unresponsive the next morning.
Malu said she uses “physical discipline” on the boy because he’s “the problem.” She sometimes uses wooden drumsticks to beat him until he screams, but he “doesn’t care.” The younger boy, she said, is “well trained.”
She told investigators that her boyfriend, 32-year-old Adam Chirico, uses timeout as punishment for the children, adding that “I’m the angry one.”
Chirico told police that he knew Malu was abusive and physical violent toward the children, adding that she had broken the boy’s arm in the past. He said that he started a complaint with social services but abandoned it because he fear that if the children were taken, she would destroy the house.
He told investigators that on Tuesday night he was working on his car and “heard yelling and then a thud.” He found Devin with “an imprint of an object across the top of his skull” and Malu on the floor holding the child “with her knees pressed to his chest.”
When the boy was found dead the next morning, Chirico said he asked Malu to delay calling for help so he could take to 2-year-old and flee before police arrived.
Malu was charged on Wednesday with aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of children. Chirico was charged the next day with endangering the welfare of children and recklessly endangering another person.
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