Police search warrant key to investigation after 3-year-old boy found hanging in closet
Nov. 28—The known details are almost too terrible to imagine.
But more details are sure to come as Bakersfield police detectives investigate the circumstances at an apartment on 38th Street where a 3-year-old boy was found last week hanged by his father's belt in a bedroom closet.
According to details included in a search warrant served by the Bakersfield Police Department and filed in Kern County Superior Court, police were dispatched to the apartment at just before noon on Nov. 20 regarding a young child "hanging in a closet and not responsive."
Besides the two parents in the apartment, both in their late-20s, there were also four children, ages 5, 4, 3 and 1.
Officers noted that when they arrived, the 3-year-old was not breathing, was not responsive and had ligature marks around his neck.
The parents told officers they were watching TV in the living room while the three oldest children played in the bedroom, according to the search warrant. That's when the 5-year-old daughter "suddenly ran into the living room screaming" that her little brother was dead.
The father ran into the bedroom and began performing CPR on his son.
The daughter further said she and her 3-year-old and 4-year-old brothers were playing with their father's belts, and that she told her father that the 4-year-old brother choked the victim. It is unclear from the wording of the search warrant whether the girl told her father this and he conveyed it to police, or whether she told police directly.
The first officers on the scene also noted that the closet was mostly empty, but contained a fanny pack, electrical cord and an empty milk crate.
Those items as well as a small USB cord and three buccal swabs were seized by police in a search of the home and residents.
"In the event this investigation is ruled to be a child abuse or neglect case," the writer of the search warrant noted, "I believe searching the residence and seizing belts and other items in the closet ... can contain biologically (sic) and physical evidence."
No belt, however, was listed among the seized items.
The writer of the search warrant also argued that obtaining buccal swabs from family members — a way to collect DNA samples for testing by swabbing the cheek or mouth — could be valuable to the investigation.
The boy was taken to a local hospital where, according to the search warrant, he was listed as "critically stable, but believed to be brain dead."
As of Tuesday evening, eight days after the incident, the Kern County Coroner's Office had not issued a death notice in the case. In the meantime, The Californian is choosing at this time not to name the victim or his family.
Reporter Steven Mayer can be reached at 661-395-7353.
