In a heart-wrenching case out of Texas, a mother and her boyfriend find themselves facing serious charges after her young son was hospitalized with critical injuries. The three-year-old, Dawson Cain Zamora, is currently on life support, suffering from severe brain trauma that includes a brain bleed, alongside bruises in various stages of healing, wounds to his chest and abdomen, and troubling signs of anal trauma.

According to a report by KDFW, the boy’s injuries came to light when Christopher Thomas Alexander, the 30-year-old boyfriend of Dawson’s mother, brought the toddler to the hospital on October 14. Alexander claimed that he found the child after hearing a “thud.” However, medical personnel noted that the extent and nature of Dawson’s injuries did not align with Alexander’s explanation, prompting them to alert the authorities.

Investigators interviewed Chelsea Rene Berg, the boy’s 30-year-old mother. She recounted leaving Dawson in Alexander’s care early that morning. Later, she received a text from Alexander updating her on Dawson having lunch, only to be followed by a frantic call from him saying he was taking the boy to the hospital.

Upon arriving at the hospital, Berg was confronted with a grim reality. She was shown photographs of her son’s injuries, starkly contrasting her earlier observation when she left for work. Berg maintained that Dawson bore no such injuries when she last saw him that morning, further deepening the mystery of what transpired while the child was under Alexander’s care.

Berg said she rushed to the hospital, where Alexander told her the same story about the “thud” he told hospital staff. Police showed Berg photos of her son’s injuries, and she said he didn’t have them when she left for work that morning.

Meanwhile, Alexander hired an attorney while at the hospital and refused to speak with police.

Alexander and Berg were both arrested two days later. Alexander is being held on $210,000 bonds, charged with injury to a child, stalking, and tampering/fabricating evidence with intent to impair an investigation.

Berg was charged with injury to a child and posted a $100,000 bond the same day she was arrested. A condition of her release was that she have no contact with the boy.

But on October 19, her attorney filed an emergency motion to modify the bond conditions after she was notified the child had no brain activity and was to be taken off life support. The motion requested supervised access so she could “say goodbye to her son before he passes away.”

The boy’s current condition is unknown. His biological father, Dahrian Zamora, told KFDA that his son has “had no improvement.”

“He has global brain damage, and he’s still on life support and has not improved,” Zamora said.

“He was beaten so bad that he was beaten to death, and that’s public knowledge of what I’ve already said,” said Zamora. “He did beat my son to death, that he did kill him. But when he got to the lobby of Medical Center McKinney, he was already dead.”

Medical staff resuscitated the boy, but he was placed on life support.