Police: Parents starve 14-year-old boy with cerebral palsy

An “extremely emaciated” boy whose parents allegedly deprived him of food for at least one month is recovering at Midtown Medical Center, according to testimony Tuesday morning in Columbus Recorder’s Court.

Police said Tiesa Sharie Ingram, 41, and John Raymond Copeland, 47, were caring for their 14-year-old child with cerebral palsy when he lost 20 pounds over the course of two months. They were arrested Friday on one count of first-degree child cruelty. Ingram and Copeland were booked into the Muscogee County Jail, but Copeland was released on a $5,000 bond prior to Tuesday’s preliminary hearing.

Detective Richard Campbell, with the Columbus Police Department’s Special Victims Unit, said authorities were called to the Division of Family and Children Services’ office on April 5 in reference to a 14-year-old boy possibly suffering from malnourishment.

Campbell said it was then that he learned that DFCS had been investigating the boy’s parents since September 2015. The details of that case have yet to be released, but police said it “sort of” concerned malnourishment.

Campbell said he went to the victim’s school, where he spoke to officials. They said he underwent spinal surgery on Jan. 20 “to correct some bones in his body that contracted” because he was “lying around for an extended amount of time,” according to police.

The student was given a medical leave of absence from Jan. 20 to March 20. His doctor later advised the parents that he would need to return on March 2 for a checkup but could return to school on March 7, Campbell testified.

According to police, Ingram and Copeland never took the child to the doctor for the checkup or back to school.

“The school continued to try to call them, but they never returned any phone calls,” Campbell said before later adding that the school, which regularly provided physical and speech therapy for the child, reported having previous issues with the child being absent.

When the boy returned to school on March 16, he had experienced a significant weight loss that concerned the faculty and staff.

“They determined that he was emaciated. You couldn’t see anything but his skin and bones,” Campbell told the court.

The victim told school officials that his parents stayed in the bed all day and only fed him chocolate milk and Capri Sun juice for at least a month.

“They never got him out of the bed. They never placed him in a wheelchair,” Campbell testified. “That was the reason, in my opinion, that he contracted the first time.”

DFCS was notified about the incident the following day.

The student was spending his spring break in his parent’s custody when DFCS visited his Ragland Court home on March 25 to investigate. The doors were unlocked and open when she went in and saw the child lying in the bed while his mother was away from the home.

Police have yet to clarify whether the child was left completely unsupervised.

“Honestly, I don’t know understand why she didn’t call police at that point, but she didn’t,” Campbell said about the social worker.

When the teen returned to school on March 28, he appeared to have shed even more pounds, police said. The school nurse determined that the boy, who weighed 70 pounds prior to his January surgery, had lost 20 pounds since then.

Police described it as a “significant weight loss for a 70-pound cerebral palsy victim.”

The following day, the school nurse checked his blood pressure and determined that he had an extremely high heart rate, headaches and a deteriorating speech. He was then admitted to Midtown Medical Center.

He was still in the hospital at the time of Tuesday’s hearing but will be released into DFCS custody after treatment, authorities confirmed.

Copeland didn’t appear in court, but Ingram pleaded not guilty to her charge before denying the accusation.

Ingram said her son has never weighed 70 pounds and doctors didn’t weigh him prior to his surgery. She went on to say that she has always feds her child, but he was “burning the calories off as she fed him.”

“My son has a back problem because his hip came out of place,” she said. “When I took him to the doctor, they pulled two strings out of the bottom of his feet and released him to go back to the school. He didn’t want to go.”

Ingram was given a $10,000 bond before both the defendants’ charges were bound over to Superior Court.

“While he was present at school, he received physical therapy and speech therapy,” Campbell said before later adding that the child communicated and eats well.

This story was originally published April 26, 2016 at 2:49 PM with the headline "Police: Parents starve 14-year-old boy with cerebral palsy."