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SANDY — A 7-year-old boy remains in critical condition at Primary Children’s Hospital and his mother was arrested after the child was found unresponsive at his home Monday, police said.
Reyna Elizabeth Flores-Rosales, 31, was arrested and booked into the Salt Lake County Jail early Tuesday morning on suspicion of child abuse and endangerment of a child, according to jail records.
Police and emergency crews responded to a report that the child was unresponsive at 7890 S. Manzano Drive in Sandy. When they arrived, crews found the child on the floor of a living room. The boy wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse, police wrote in an affidavit filed in 3rd District Court.
“(First responders) noted that he had bright red blood coming from his nose and orange-red fluid in his mouth,” the affidavit stated.
Emergency crews performed CPR on the boy and he was taken to Alta View Hospital before he was flown to Primary Children’s Hospital.
As they worked on the boy, responders also found “multiple injuries and scars” that were “in various stages of healing” on the child, including burn or ligature marks on his neck, as well as other scrapes, cuts and sores around his body, police wrote in the affidavit.
"These are the cases that every officer dreads — that every paramedic and firefighter dreads," Sandy Police Sgt. Jason Nielsen said. "Unfortunately, we see them. It takes time for the paramedics, the officers and the firefighters to deal with these types of things."
Doctors at Primary Children’s Hospital told police they found serious head trauma during a CT scan and believed that injury came from one incident. Doctors also said the injury was no accident, according to the affidavit.
“They compared the damage and the bleeding on the brain to what is seen in shaken baby syndrome,” police wrote in the document.
Police interviewed Flores-Rosales at the home and she told them the boy “had ‘gone’ in his diaper” and that she “put him in the shower to clean him up,” the affidavit stated.
“(Flores-Rosales) said (the boy) was in the shower for nearly an hour and she checked on him occasionally,” the affidavit continued. “She went in to check on him again and found him slumped over in the seated position on the floor of the shower. He was not breathing. (Flores-Rosales) moved (the boy) to the front room and called 911.”
Police also inspected the shower area and found “a small amount” of blood on the floor, the affidavit stated.
After interviews with Flores-Rosales and experts, police felt they had enough to arrest her with probable cause, Nielsen said. Police are continuing to investigate the case before they present their investigation to the district attorney's office for formal charges, Nielsen said.
Court records show Flores-Rosales pleaded guilty to distribution of a controlled substance, a second-degree felony, in 2015. As a part of the deal, one first-degree felony charge was amended to a second-degree felony and the other charge was dismissed, records show.
A judge ordered her to be placed on probation for 36 months on Sept. 11, 2015, according to records.
The affidavit said Flores-Rosales lived with the 7-year-old boy and a 10-month-old child. It stated that she was planning to leave her current residence, that her husband lives in California and that she had no other family in Utah.
Neighbors had reported abuse prior to Monday's incident. A witness told police Flores-Rosales had been reported to the Department of Child and Family Services in the past, Nielsen said.
He urged anyone who may have cause to believe abuse is going on to contact police.
"If you suspect anything, absolutely call the police and get us involved, call the DCFS and report it to them," Nielsen said. "We have to go through our investigations and that process, but at least it gets us involved and we can offer resources to these families."
Contributing: Ladd Egan, KSL TV
Editor's note: This article previously had Sgt. Jason "Nielson" instead of "Nielsen." That name spelling has been corrected.
