Child Care Operator to Stand Trial

The infant was dropped off at a Simi Valley child care center healthy--except for a runny nose.

Nine hours later he was airlifted to a Los Angeles hospital where a neurosurgeon said the unconscious child had sustained an injury “the equivalent to a person falling from a second- or third-story building onto a concrete surface,” according to an investigator.

After a Municipal Court hearing Wednesday, a Ventura judge ordered child care operator Margaret Mary Major to stand trial on charges that she severely injured the 1-year-old boy.

“The evidence we have seen is quite clear,” said Judge James P. Cloninger. “The child suffered injuries at the hands of whatever adult had custody.”

Major, 48, is accused of shaking the boy so hard in September he almost died. She faces a charge of child abuse and an added allegation that she caused great bodily harm.

If convicted, Major could face up to 11 years in prison. She will be arraigned May 28 in Ventura County Municipal Court.

As two Simi Valley police detectives and a district attorney investigator testified, the child’s young parents leaned on each other and tightly held hands.

When a detective described how Major allegedly put the child down to change his diaper and he “let out a bloodcurdling scream,” then went limp, the child’s mother whimpered, then began to cry. She held several pictures of her son.

Simi Valley Det. John Parks, who led the investigation into the boy’s head injury, said the probe took nearly three months because the district attorney’s office wanted a local medical expert, Dr. William Goldie, to review the case.

According to Parks’ testimony, the boy’s father dropped him off at Major’s child care center at approximately 7:35 a.m., watched him play for about 15 minutes, then left.

In interviews with police, Major said the child had a runny nose and would scream when she wiped it but was otherwise behaving normally.

At about 1:30 p.m., Major called 911 to say the boy had stopped breathing, Parks testified. She told officers that she had been changing him when he hit his head on the floor, let out a shriek, then “went limp in her arms.”

The boy was rushed to Simi Valley Hospital, then airlifted to Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles.

He arrived in a comatose state. Doctors found swelling of the brain and retinal bleeding in both eyes, according to testimony from Matthew Basolo, an investigator for the district attorney’s office.

“The doctor believed the injury was caused by shaking the victim, in conjunction with some sort of external force,” Basolo said. “He said the child could suffer significant neurological defects.”

These defects, according to the doctor, could include paralysis or weakness on one side, cerebral palsy or developmental problems.

“He felt they would be permanent,” Basolo said.

After Wednesday’s hearing, Major’s attorney, Richard Hutton, said the facts in the case will ultimately show Major is innocent.

“Obviously there was some preexisting condition that was underplayed here,” he said.

Repeatedly during the hearing, Hutton tried unsuccessfully to introduce evidence that the boy had sustained a head injury seven months before the September incident.

He said he hoped to present medical records that would show this.

The infant’s parents had said in police interviews that he had in fact fallen the night before and hit his head. But his father told detectives at the time that the boy cried, then resumed playing.

Hutton said the case has been devastating to Major, a longtime child care operator.

“Kids love her,” he said. “I will bring a whole parade of witnesses who will testify to how the kids adore her.”

As for the child, who will be 2 at the end of September, neither his parents nor his attorney would comment on his recovery.

“It will probably come up,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Blair. “But we don’t need it to prove our case. . . . This is a case involving the infliction of great bodily injury.”