When a Carrollton woman’s 19-month-old son arrived at the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in May with broken ribs, it wasn’t the first time CHKD’s doctors had seen the boy.

He’d been brought in twice previously since February, each time with “significant injuries,” according to court filings in the case against Jias LaTwan Wilson-Booker, 25, and the child’s mother, Ifrika Aniya Richardson, 23, who each face multiple felony child abuse charges.

On Feb. 18, he’d been brought in with “abdominal abrasions and bruising” and “right ear bleeding.” On March 16, the boy “could not hold weight on his leg” and doctors found “two breaks to the shin,” a “healing wrist that was broken previously” and “signs of malnutrition.”

When a relative took the boy to an urgent care center and was referred to CHKD third time on May 16, doctors discovered a “fractured skull” and “16 fractures to his ribs in various stages of healing,” as well as “a liver laceration, a pancreas injury, and now an acute kidney injury.”

The investigation into Wilson-Booker and Richardson began May 17 when a CHKD social worker alerted the Isle of Wight County Sheriff’s Office to the repeated hospitalizations and

a doctor described the boy’s injuries as “indicative of abuse,” telling investigators she feared “the next time she saw the child he would be dead.”

The Sheriff’s Office said in a May 29 news release announcing the couple’s arrest that a joint investigation with the Isle of Wight County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, Department of Social Services and CHKD “determined that the child was in the care of the child’s mother and her live-in boyfriend at the time the injuries occurred.”

The Sheriff’s Office said in court filings that Richardson initially attributed the boy’s Feb. 18 injuries to the child’s grandmother “jumping on her son” and “did not have an explanation” when questioned about the March 16 hospital visit other than to describe her son as “an active child who jumps off couches and was okay the previous night.” During the same initial interview, Richardson denied she or Wilson-Booker had physically disciplined the child, and

allegedly attributed her son’s most recent injuries to his having “slipped onto the floor” and “hit his head” after she “said ‘boo’” when the boy came out of his bedroom.

Court filings say Richardson in subsequent interviews changed her story and “provided information that suggested” the injuries “came from Jias.”

She allegedly told investigators she’d left the boy alone with Wilson-Booker “the night before” the child’s May 16 hospital visit “for approximately an hour” while she “got food and weed,” and said when she returned the boy was “breathing hard, but she felt he calmed down once she picked him up.” Investigators say Wilson-Booker, when questioned, told them “the complete opposite story.”

During one of her later interviews with law enforcement, Richardson allegedly told investigators Wilson-Booker “had been violent with her and her son” and “admitted to multiple lies.”

She allegedly told investigators she saw Wilson-Booker pull her son “by the arm” and “the crying he does every time” Wilson-Booker enters the boy’s presence.

“Jias has put so much fear in me that I’m scared to do anything,” Richardson texted an investigator on May 21, according to court filings, alleging Wilson-Booker’s abuse to have included “hitting me in the stomach so the baby could be gone” and “choking me.”

Wilson-Booker allegedly confessed to hitting the boy “in the head with the closet doorknob.”

Wilson-Booker’s mother, however, allegedly told investigators she’d seen Richardson “throw” the child “in the car and hit him multiple times in the head while at her house.”

Following a lengthy hospital stay, the child was released into the custody of the Isle of Wight County Department of Social Services, which is providing care and supervision.  

Richardson and Wilson-Booker are each being held at the Western Tidewater Regional Jail in Suffolk. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Stahlman, on June 18, denied Wilson-Booker’s appeal of Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court Judge Stan Clark’s June 3 decision not to release Wilson-Booker on bond. Richardson had her own bond hearing on June 24.

Richardson faces three felony charges, including “malicious assault – victim severely injured,” as well as a Class 1 misdemeanor charge of simple assault against a family member. Wilson-Booker also faces three felony charges, including “stab, cut or wound with malicious intent – victim permanently impaired,” and the same Class 1 misdemeanor charge.