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Last updated on Monday, November 6, 2017
(INDIANAPOLIS) - A Marion County toddler is dead after suffering extensive head trauma from weeks of suspected abuse and his father’s girlfriend has been charged in connection with his death.
Two-year-old Jose Cubas Rivas was rushed in for emergency surgery on October 28 after Dilcia Chavez Claros brought him into the hospital unconscious.
Claros was arrested and charged with neglect of a dependent resulting in death.
The 2-year-old suffered a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain. Claros told doctors he had fallen from a bunk bed while playing with her sons.
Rivera underwent emergency surgery, where doctors had to remove a portion of his skull to release some of the pressure on his brain. In addition to head trauma, they noted several unexplained bruises and smaller injuries covering the boy's body.
Doctors called the Department of Child Services after concluding that the injuries to the child's head were so severe that they could not have been accidental. Claros, 30, was arrested two days later in connection with his death.
Rivas was pronounced dead on November 1 after doctors say his brain showed no signs of activity.
A social worker who was assigned to the case first noticed signs of abuse on the 2-year-old during a follow-up visit in September and had filed a child abuse report through the Department of Child Services September 20 - over a month before Rivas' death - but had never heard from the investigator assigned to the case.
Rivas had, "two dark black eyes, a large bump on the front of his forehead, a small bruise on the left side of his cheek." The child also had a busted and swollen lip and the social worker said it looked like he had been punched in the mouth. Claros said the child fell outside while with his father.
After several canceled follow-ups, the social worker visited the family again in mid-September. This time, the child had new injuries to his head which Claros again blamed on him falling off a table.
Claros told the social worker that she had taken Rivas to the hospital on September 11 after police were called on her while she was shopping at Plato's Closet.
The child had more injuries including marks around his throat as if he had been picked up by his neck and hand prints on his arms and two black eyes and swelling on the side of his face.
Then on October 28, Claros told detectives she had taken her three children to Goodwill and that Rivas had gotten sick inside the store. After taking him home, she gave him crackers and some juice and he went to play with the other boys. Later, one of her sons came to her says Rivas had fallen from the bunk beds and was not moving. She told police she tried to revive the child with mouth-to-mouth and when that didn't work she put him in a cold shower. When that didn't work, Claros said she used rubbing alcohol under his nose but still couldn't wake him. She then called Rivas' father, who told her to take him to the hospital. Ten minutes later she changed his clothes and took him to the hospital.
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