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COMPTON (CNS) – A Los Angeles man was sentenced to 21 years in state prison for inflicting injuries that left his live-in girlfriend’s 3-year-old son paralyzed and preventing the woman from getting immediate medical attention for the boy or reporting the abuse that she also endured, prosecutors said today.
Javier Zamora, 26, pleaded no contest Thursday to two counts of child abuse and dissuading a witness by force or threat, three counts of intimidation of a witness and one count of injuring a child’s parent. All of the charges were felonies.
He also admitted allegations that he personally inflicted great bodily injury on the child.
Zamora — who lived with his girlfriend and her toddler and his two biological children in a mobile home — slammed the 3-year-old’s head into a wall while his mother was taking a shower last June 3. He then discouraged the woman from seeking medical attention for her son and had her provide a false statement about how the boy was injured, according to Deputy District Attorney Miguel Espinoza.
The boy, now 4, is paralyzed, unresponsive and in a vegetative state as a result of his injuries, according to the prosecutor.
Evidence gathered during the investigation indicated Zamora had been violent with the child in the past, Espinoza said.
Three weeks after the boy was injured, Zamora punched the child’s mother, leaving her with a black eye, and prevented her from calling police, the prosecutor said.
Hope Beltran, 22, pleaded no contest to a felony count of child abuse for exposing her child to regular abuse by Zamora, according to Espinoza. She was sentenced to a year in county jail and ordered to complete a one-year residential treatment program upon her release from custo
