A Missouri baby was left fighting for his life after his mom’s fiancé says he dropped him on his head — then squeezed him in a bearhug to try to stop him from crying, according to cops and his dad.
Heartbreaking photos show 10-month-old Waylon attached to tubes after suffering two brain bleeds and a collapsed lung after he was rushed unconscious to a Kansas City hospital.
“He has basically been reset to a newborn,” his dad, Tyler Burbridge, told KY3 on Thursday.
Even now he is home from a painful six-week stay at the hospital, “he can barely lift his head up,” the dad said. “He’s going to have to have a lot of physical therapy,” he said.
The mom’s boyfriend, Jordan Boggess, 28, was arrested on a felony child abuse charge after allegedly admitting to dropping the baby, but calling it an accident, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Boggess said the boy’s mom, Bessie McCamish, had left him in a baby jumper on Sept. 14 to go to the bathroom when he picked him up and “began to toss him in the air” to “comfort” him, the affidavit said.
The second time he threw him, “the child fell on his head,” Boggess allegedly told investigators, blaming it on having “sweaty hands.”
“Jordan then admitted after the child fell on the floor he panicked and ‘bear hugged’ the child ‘a little hard’ until he stopped screaming,” the affidavit said.
“Jordan was asked if it was tight and he said yes. Jordan admitted he might have hurt him when he squeezed him.”
Doctors later confirmed that Waylon had suffered “abusive head trauma” as well as physical abuse, according to Law & Crime.
“He basically took my son’s life,” the boy’s dad, Burbridge, told KY3. “He took my son’s future. You don’t toss a baby into the air.”
The infant’s mother, meanwhile, told the outlet that the family’s “main focus is on Waylon on him recovering and on him striving to get stronger!”
Boggess is due in court on Dec. 13.
