Convicted felon severely burned 2-year-old, police say

A 21-year-old convicted felon is accused of severely burning his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son, according to an arrest report released this week.

Jonathan Caleb Lee was arrested on a warrant and booked into the Clark County Detention Center on Thursday on one count of child abuse resulting in substantial bodily harm, according to jail records.

Lee told police that while running a bath on Aug. 15, the boy slipped and fell, burning his body, according to an arrest report from the Metropolitan Police Department.

The mother said she was at work and left Lee home with her brother and two nephews. One of the witnesses told police that Lee spanked the boy for going to the bathroom in his diaper. He then took the child to the bathroom to clean up, according to the police report.

A witness also told detectives Lee called him into the bathroom after the child was already injured and he saw the boy’s skin peeling.

Lee told the baby’s mother it “did not look like anything,” so he didn’t bring the child to a doctor, the woman told police.

The woman, upon coming home, immediately brought the baby to an emergency room where authorities said he suffered second and third degrees burns to his back, butt, chest, thighs and the top of his foot, according to the arrest report.

A burn specialist identified only as “Peltier” in the report went to the house and questioned Lee’s story that the boy fell in the bath, because the bottom of his feet were not burned, police wrote.

“Peltier determined the story given by Jonathan did not match the physical evidence present on (the victim’s) body,” the arrest report read. “Peltier believes the burn patterns and locations do not match Jonathan’s accounts that it was a bath he was preparing … Peltier stated this statement was simply not possible in any way.”

Lee was on parole after spending two years in the Nevada Department of Corrections on an attempted murder case from 2017, according to prison records.

Lee and Haile Yobell pleaded guilty to attempted murder after authorities said they shot a man inside a Summerlin home. A third co-defendant, Dakari Walker, pleaded guilty to attempted battery with substantial bodily harm and spent two months in jail before he was released, according to court records.

Lee is being held without bail and expected to appear in court for a preliminary hearing April 4.

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.