Man Held in Child’s Beating Was Jailed for Similar Attack : Crime: The 2-year-old boy injured Thursday is fighting for his life in intensive care unit. Toddler in 1983 assault was hurt while being disciplined for wetting the bed.

A Tustin man accused of critically injuring the 2-year-old son of his live-in girlfriend was convicted of the same crime nine years ago, according to Orange County Superior Court documents.

The injured boy is fighting for his life in the pediatrics intensive care unit at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, authorities said.

“The homicide (detectives) are standing by” in case the boy dies, Sheriff’s Lt. Robert Rivas said.

Lawrence Joseph Lujan, 30, an unemployed hairdresser, is being held on suspicion of throwing the boy against a bedroom wall in a fit of rage early Thursday morning. He was arrested Thursday afternoon after he reportedly confessed to the crime.

He is being held on $10,000 bail in Orange County Jail, awaiting a Tuesday Municipal Court arraignment in Santa Ana, Rivas said.

Lujan pleaded guilty to child abuse on Oct. 17, 1983, according to court documents. He served six months in Orange County Jail and was given three years’ probation.

He served his probation without incident, court documents show.

In the earlier incident, Lujan fractured the left arm of another 2-year-old who had tried to put his hand in the way of a belt during a spanking over a bed-wetting. Several months before that incident, Lujan had invited that toddler and his mother to live with him in his Santa Ana home, court records show.

Lujan, then 22, took over responsibility for the boy’s toilet training, according to court records, believing that strict discipline is the best way to achieve results.

In a letter filed in court, Lujan said he believed that “corporal punishment (was) a method of discipline (that) was legal and acceptable.” The letter also said the boy felt close to Lujan, calling him “Daddy.”

His attorney, in pleading for leniency for Lujan at sentencing, told a judge that his client was remorseful and had been rehabilitated through psychiatric counseling.

The child abuse “is highly unlikely” to recur, wrote attorney Marne A. Glass in a letter during Lujan’s sentencing.

But authorities said that on Thursday Lujan again became enraged with a small child, and this time sent him to the hospital with a possible fractured skull.

Authorities were called to the house, in the 12000 block of Malena Drive in an unincorporated section of Tustin, after Lujan reportedly called a 911 operator to say the boy had accidentally been injured and later suffered an epileptic attack.

Orange County Fire Capt. Dan Young said: “He said (the boy) hit his head on the toilet and got a knot on his head, and the boy went into a seizure.”

Paramedics responding to the call found the boy lying in the bathroom, unconscious and bleeding, Young said. There were also bruises over several parts of his body.

Suspecting abuse, paramedics called the Sheriff’s Department. Deputies responded and took both Lujan and the toddler’s mother, Cynthia Denise Jones, in for questioning.

Jones, 25, had been on her way to work when Lujan is suspected of hurting the child, and she returned home to find the street clogged with ambulances, firetrucks and police cars.

Jones was unavailable for comment. The boy’s natural father flew in from Arizona to be with the child and was at the hospital Friday, officials said.

After several hours of questioning, Rivas said, Lujan reportedly told investigators that he had been abusing the child almost on a daily basis since he and Jones moved into a room in the North Tustin home three months ago.

The owner of that house, Curtis Willis, said Friday that he did not know about any abuse. He said he never noticed any loud noise from Lujan’s room or saw any bruises on the child.

“It was as much a surprise to me as anyone else,” said Willis, an Orange drywall contractor.

Willis added that he learned that the boy had been injured when he returned home from work about 12:30 p.m. Thursday.

Investigators were still there when Willis arrived, searching the house for evidence of systematic child abuse.

“We’re going to be checking with neighbors,” Rivas said. “We still have a lot of details we have to tie up.”

Times staff writer George Frank contributed to this report.