By Raul Castillo
Nov 27, 2023, 18:08 PM EST
A Colorado woman was arrested Friday and faces charges after she hit a child so hard that she suffered a massive brain hemorrhage and had to have part of her skull removed, according to family friends and police.
The Lakewood Police Department announced in a tweet posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that there was an arrest warrant for McKinley Slone Hernandez, 25, on charges of child abuse.
In an update on the case the following day, the department reported that the woman was arrested without incident and jailed on $100,000 bond.
Stephanie Reichert, the mother of the attacked boy, told local news station KUSA that Hernandez injured her 2-year-old son Giovanni on Sept. 1. According to the woman, the boy required multiple surgeries to treat his subsequent brain hemorrhage.
“You would never think this would happen to you, especially someone you consider a friend,” Reichert told the station. “He doesn’t like strangers. Now he doesn’t like nurses or doctors. He doesn’t let anyone touch him. We have to do everything for him in there.”
Reichert told KDVR that she’s not sure exactly what happened before her son was injured because the babysitter “won’t admit anything.”
“All she said is that she was drinking and that he was injured while in her care,” he told the outlet. “I always make up scenarios in my head about the injuries he suffered, so I wish I knew.”
“The worst thing I have ever seen in my life”
According to the mother’s version, she left Giovanni in the care of Hernández. A few hours after leaving, he received a message from the woman in which she asked him to rush to St. Anthony Hospital because “her son had become lifeless after a bath.”
“Once I saw him and the 50 doctors around him, I had to leave the room because it was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life,” the mother told local media KDVR.
The boy was intubated, placed in an induced coma and underwent several more operations, KUSA reported.
Hernandez regularly monitored Giovanni and several other children at an unauthorized daycare in his home, KDVR detailed.
Giovanni was a “happy, healthy and energetic two-year-old,” says a GoFundMe made by the family, which is raising money to help his parents, Anthony and Stefanie Reichert, pay for medical expenses. The collection has already exceeded $25,000.
The attacker was still incarcerated at the Jefferson County Jail as of Monday, according to online records from the facility shared by Fox News Digital. She is now scheduled to appear in Jefferson County Court on December 20.
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