A mother has been accused of starving her two-month-old kid to the point where police investigators claimed he resembled “a Holocaust survivor.”
Christin Donat, 26, of Evansville, Indiana, was arrested and charged with two counts of child negligence in connection with her baby’s severe malnutrition, Vanderburgh County Sheriff Noah Robinson confirmed to reporters on Monday.
According to an affidavit obtained by The Independent, Michael Smith, a Department of Child Services worker, was summoned to Deaconess Gateway Hospital on November 6 in response to a report of a child suffering from “malnutrition, starvation, and dehydration.”
According to the affidavit, a friend took the two-month-old infant from his mother and hurried him to the hospital.
The youngster was so underweight that his skin was “hanging off” his arms, and he weighed only 6 pounds, 6 ounces, which was two ounces less than his birth weight, according to the docs.
“One of the terms used to describe this child’s condition was almost as that of a Holocaust survivor,” Robinson told me.
The sheriff described the infant’s state as akin to emaciated temporal wasting, a disorder that causes severe weight loss, with “a sunken-in face, where literally all the fat has been used in the body, trying to keep it alive, resulting in the skin hanging from the bone.”
Donat allegedly arrived at the hospital hours after her child was taken to the emergency room, claiming she needed to rest after working a shift to a Dollar General in Evansville.
According to the complaint, Donat initially told investigators that she fed her infant one ounce of formula six times each day, but then modified her narrative. She also allegedly failed to feed her son correctly when he was under the care of medical professionals at the hospital, prompting staff to intervene.
Donat expressed regret to investigators, saying “she should have done things differently,” according to the affidavit.
Robinson stated that there could be no other conclusion than Donat “being deliberately indifferent to the needs of the child.”
The baby has now been removed from Donat’s custody and put with a foster family.
Donat is currently being held in the Vanderburgh County Jail on a $25,000 bond. She is set to appear in court on Monday.