HARRINGTON
by WES FERGUSON
The baby had suffered blunt-force trauma. Swelling blood was displacing part of his brain.
Rushed from his home in Kyle to a hospital in Austin, the 19-month-old boy underwent emergency neurosurgery Feb. 1 to remove the blood hemorrhaging underneath his cranium. Doctors also found significant retinal bruising in his left eye, a scrape on his forehead and a bruise on his back.
His mother told investigators the toddler had been throwing a temper tantrum because she wouldn’t hold him, and he’d banged his own head on the floor, according to an arrest affidavit.
But doctors at Dell Children’s Medical Center did not believe her account, the report said.
“The child victim suffered a life-threatening brain injury, and the explanations provided by the caretaker fail to provide an adequate explanation for such a severe injury,” Hays County Sheriff’s Office Det. Lenny Martinez said in the affidavit.
Two weeks after her son’s emergency surgery, Emily Straite Harrington, 38, of Kyle was arrested Thursday on a charge of committing serious bodily injury to a child, a first-degree felony. Harrington remained in the Hays County Jail this week on a $275,000 bond.
According to the affidavit, Harrington told investigators she and her two children had just arrived at their home in the 100 block of Bent Tree Court on the afternoon of Feb. 1 when the toddler began throwing a temper tantrum. She placed him on the floor, and he fell to the ground and started banging his head on the floor, something he’d done many times, the report said.
She walked outside to retrieve some items from her truck, then came inside and answered a phone call from her boyfriend. At that time she noticed the child kicking his legs, though his arms were still, his eyes were closed and hands curled, according to the report. She took him to her truck and dialed 911, reporting that her son was having a seizure and was unconscious.
Investigators say Harrington was the only person supervising the children at the time of the injury. The child has been released from the hospital, and his safety is being monitored by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the sheriff’s office said. It is unclear how the traumatic injury may affect the child in the future, the sheriff’s department added, though an MRI showed an injury to the left side of his brain that was causing weakness to the right side of his body.
