Toddler suffers violent death

Utah's first recognized case of nonaccident, trauma fatality

Second in a four-part series

This is the heartbreaking story of little Ronnie Davies.

He would be 23 today had he lived. Instead, an examination of his life — and the criminal case that followed his death — serve as a landmark in Utah's prosecution of child homicides.

Brent Chandler: "OK, interview will conclude ... . And we would like to wish you, by the way, the best of luck in this situation. We would like to see him pull out and survive."

Leland Thomas DeMille: "He's going to. He's got to. We still got to take him to Disneyland." — Interview conducted by Brent Chandler, chief of Washington Police Department, with Leland Thomas DeMille on May 7, 1985, two days after 3 1/2-year-old Ronnie Davies was rushed to a St. George hospital with a skull fracture and brain injury.

An emergency room nurse met Jan Davies on May 5, 1985, as she rushed through the sliding doors at Dixie Medical Center with Ronnie in her arms.

"He fell from the toilet and hit his head," Davies told nurse Charlene Hopkins. The child was gasping at this point, his hazel eyes dilated and rolled back, his body limp.

Emergency room crews started artificial respiration and an intravenous line and put a tube into his lungs so the boy could breathe.

And a few minutes later, when X-rays and a CT scan revealed a skull fracture that looped from the boy's right frontal lobe around and down to his spine, nurses and doctors also noticed his little body was covered with bruises. Some were fresh, and some the green-tinged color of healing injuries. There were bruises on his upper abdomen, on his legs, arm, elbows and chin. A welt on his belly crossed over to his back. Later, his autopsy showed that even the muscles in his neck were bruised and traumatized.

An exhaustive study of this case — of hospital records, nurses' and doctors' comments, witness statements and court testimony — reveals the unsettling story of Ronnie Davies' short life.

It is the story of a young boy whose days seemed plagued with accidents, falls and injuries to his head. It is also a story of the adults around him who were too distracted, overwhelmed or troubled themselves to care.

It is also the story of a mother with a history of being around children who ended up injured. A woman who, by all accounts, did not see the real picture of what was happening with her son.

It is also the story of a criminal justice system that might just as easily have let the criminal case involving Ronnie Davies disappear. However, all these documents and records also reveal the doggedness of a young, small-town police chief who made it his mission to sniff out the truth in the case of a 3 1/2-year-old boy who was beaten almost to death and then later died in May 1985.

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