North Carolina parents are charged with felony child abuse after deputies say their 1-year-old son fell from a third-floor balcony in Wake County
Deputies from the Wake County Sheriff’s Office arrived at a home on Chandler Ridge Court around 5 p.m. last Saturday to handle the report of a child falling from a balcony. The 1-year-old boy’s parents are now facing felony child abuse charges, according to People, as arrest warrants allege both adults were asleep when he got onto the third-floor balcony.
The warrants state the 1-year-old was awake while Saniyah Monchaye Person, 26, and Jawon Lee Whitley, 28, were sleeping. During this period, the boy managed to reach an unsecured patio door located on the third floor of the apartment building, deputies say. The child fell three stories after accessing the balcony.
The sheriff’s office said the boy sustained a punctured lung and a fractured pelvis from the fall, according to the arrest warrant for Person. Emergency responders took the child to a nearby hospital with injuries deputies described as life-threatening. No update on his condition appears to have been released publicly.
The father reportedly told deputies the balcony door latch had been broken for months
Court documents filed in Wake County District Court add more detail to the account, as reported by Law&Crime. Whitley allegedly told deputies the latch on the balcony door was broken and had been for a couple of months. Investigators believe the boy opened the door, climbed onto items kept on the balcony, and fell, the affidavit states.
A child playing outside reportedly saw the fall and ran to get a parent, who then went to the family’s apartment. The father allegedly took about four minutes to answer the door, according to the court filings. Deputies said their investigation into the fall is ongoing.
Whitley was taken into custody the same day, and he faces a charge of negligent child abuse resulting in serious bodily injury. Records show he is currently held in jail on a $50,000 bond. Person was arrested three days later on the same charge. However, information regarding her bond status is not currently clear.
North Carolina law ties this felony charge to how badly the child was hurt
The charge falls under the state’s felony child abuse statute. It makes a caregiver’s grossly negligent omission a Class E felony when it shows reckless disregard for human life and seriously injures a child. The law defines serious bodily injury as harm that creates a substantial risk of death or leads to prolonged hospitalization, among other outcomes.
That element appears central to this case, as the warrants cite a punctured lung and a fractured pelvis. Neither parent has been convicted of a crime, and both are presumed innocent while the case moves through the Wake County courts.
Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital estimated that about 86,500 balcony fall injuries were treated in U.S. emergency departments from 1990 through 2006, according to a national injury study. Nearly a quarter of those patients were hospitalized, and 94% of the falls happened at home. However, the injury rate among children dropped significantly over that period.
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