Infant’s Bones Broken In Beating Unemployed Pullman Man Charged With Assault

A two-month-old boy suffered more than a half-dozen broken bones and is being fed through a tube after being beaten by his mother’s roommate, a Whitman County deputy prosecutor said Wednesday.

Darla Copeland Grose added that the child’s assailant, Brian Feuerborn, 22, of Pullman, told police he had an “out of body experience” in which he lost control of himself during the beatings.

Feuerborn, an unemployed Pullman High School graduate, was ordered held without bail on assault charges in the Whitman County Jail.

Copeland Grose told District Court Judge David Frazier that Feuerborn might flee and is a danger to others. Pullman police began investigating Feuerborn on Friday after Child Protective Services workers told them of a child brought to a local doctor with two broken ribs.

Further examination at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane showed far more extensive injuries, including an arm broken in two places, a single break in the other arm, a broken leg, a third broken rib and possible nerve damage.

The child is breathing and eating through a tube, the prosecutor said.

“It (the child) just lays there and whimpers,” she said. “You can’t comfort it, probably because every time it was picked up before, it suffered more pain.”

Police declined to identify the child’s mother, but Frazier identified her in court as Rebecca Vargas. Police said she is 20 and unemployed.

Vargas, in court Wednesday, told Frazier she does not want Feuerborn back in her house because it would prevent her from regaining custody of her other two children, ages 2 and 4, who were placed with local relatives following the assault.

Police arrested Feuerborn for second-degree assault Monday after he told them he grew angry when he was left with the child and he cried.

“Mr. Feuerborn’s own words to the officer were that he can’t control himself,” Copeland Grose told Frazier, “that he loses control when he feels frustrated, that he doesn’t feel he can even control his own body.”

Police also are investigating a possible assault against one of Vargas’ other children, Copeland Grose said.

Frazier said he would consider releasing Feuerborn on bail after a mental evaluation and if arrangements could be made for him to live with relatives in the Tri-Cities area.

He is scheduled to be arraigned Friday on a charge of first-degree assault.

, DataTimes