"Toddler Jane Doe" - 3 yo (3/2011) Accused: Cody Lane Davis - Tyler TX

An emergency room doctor testified this morning that his first thoughts when he saw the 3-year-old girl lying expressionless and heavily bruised in the examining room were that she must be a victim of child abuse.



The testimony came this morning during the first day of testimony in the trial of Cody Lane Davis, 27, of Winnsboro. He is on trial for one count of injury to a child, a first-degree felony which can bring either probation or up to a life sentence if he is convicted.

He is accused of beating a 3-year-old child who was in his care in March 2011 so severely that she suffered a brain hemorrhage and is now permanently blind, according information presented in Judge Christi Kennedy's courtroom this morning. The now-4-year-old child and her two young siblings are currently in separate foster homes.

The girl's mother pleaded guilty to a charge of injury to a child, but has not yet been sentenced, prosecutor Whitney Tharpe said.

Dr. Daniel Baber, an emergency room doctor at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler, testified that he was on duty in March 2011 when the girl was brought into the hospital. The girl had to be airlifted to Children's Hospital in Dallas because of the severity of her injuries, Dr. Baber testified.

"She had 33 separate injuries that were in various stages of healing," he said as he described the girl's examination.

The doctor testified that the child was so malnourished that she looked as if she were "a starving child in Africa." Her hair was thin and brittle and patches of it were missing, he said in court.

The girl was so dehydrated, that she was unable to cry. An emergency room nurse testified that the child had to be given several containers of saline solution intravenously before her body made enough tears to be able to cry.

Defense attorney Greg Waldron called the situation a "tragedy" during his opening statements to the jury, and discussed how the child's mother had already pleaded guilty to the charge of injury to a child. He discussed how his client had full responsibility for the three young children as their mother worked at night.

Testimony continues this afternoon.

http://www.cbs19.tv/story/16643631/doctor-testifies-3-year-old-girl-had-33-separate-injuries-when-examined