Father Is Charged With Abuse That Left Infant Brain-Damaged

A 21-year-old Ventura-area man has been charged with child abuse in the battering of his 3-month-old son in September, leaving the child blind and brain-damaged, authorities said Tuesday.

Donald Ray Boyd, taken into custody last week in New Hampshire, is scheduled to be brought back to Ventura today. Boyd had been arrested after his son, Jacob Payne, was taken to the hospital with serious head injuries on Sept. 27. But Boyd was released from jail pending further investigation.

After a six-month inquiry, the Ventura County district attorney’s office this week charged Boyd with two counts of child abuse. If found guilty, he would face a maximum of seven years in prison.

From the start, Boyd has maintained his innocence. In an October interview, he said: “I never harmed my little boy at all.”

The child, now 9 months old, has been placed with a foster family in Ventura County. He is still undergoing outpatient treatment for head injuries, and doctors are unsure how completely he will recover, authorities said.

Although sheriff’s deputies and prosecutors declined to discuss the details of the case, they said Tuesday that interviews with doctors and witnesses led them to file charges against Boyd.

“We always suspected him,” said Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela M. Henke-Dobroth, supervisor of the office’s child-abuse unit. “But there was a lot of medical evidence to gather.”

Boyd had been watching the baby for nine hours while his girlfriend, Cynthia Payne, 20, was working at a McDonald’s restaurant, deputies said.

When Payne returned from work at 6 p.m., she discovered that the baby was lethargic, almost in a coma, investigators said.

The child was taken to Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura and then transported by helicopter to Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles. Doctors found that the baby’s retinas were detached, authorities said. Doctors said that 75% of the child’s brain had been damaged.

“It was pretty aggravated,” Henke-Dobroth said of the boy’s injuries. “But he is progressing well and he’s alive. . . .”

The child spent at least a month in intensive care at Childrens Hospital, authorities said.

Sheriff’s deputies had arrested Boyd the night of the incident on suspicion of child abuse. But he was released because the district attorney’s office was not able to file charges against him within 48 hours of his arrest, as required by law.

“It was a matter of getting our ducks in a row,” said Michael K. Frawley, a deputy district attorney.

Investigators said Boyd was arrested on March 25 by police in Clairmont, N.H., where he was staying with relatives.

Representatives of the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office were on their way Tuesday to New Hampshire to take Boyd into custody and return him to Ventura, where he is to be booked into County Jail.