San Jose police say it took eight months for officers investigating the suspicious death of a severely malnourished 2-month-old baby to learn from Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner that the infant’s skull had been fractured, during which time the boy’s mother — now wanted in connection with the death — appears to have fled to China.
“We had no idea” the child’s skull had been fractured, San Jose Police Department Homicide Lt. Ali Miri said earlier this month at a meeting of the Santa Clara County Child Abuse Prevention Council. Speaking generally about the department’s handling of sensitive child death cases, he said, “There’s nothing worse than getting communication that things are different than you thought they were.”
The impact of any communications breakdown remains unclear in the death of baby Charles Zheng, who died April 4 shortly after his parents brought the infant to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. Police say they first learned about the skull fracture in December.
Santa Clara County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Michelle Jorden declined several requests for an interview, citing the ongoing investigation into baby Charles’ death. But in emailed responses to questions from the Bay Area News Group, a spokesperson for Santa Clara County didn’t directly refute the police lieutenant’s account but said such delicate investigations can be lengthy.
The spokesperson said that San Jose police were “informed of findings concerning to the Medical Examiner-Coroner after the autopsy was conducted” in April, but they declined to elaborate on what was shared because it “may impede an active homicide investigation.”
The confusion and delays raise fresh questions about the handling of child abuse death investigations in Santa Clara County and the level of cooperation between the two main agencies tasked with investigating fatalities across the South Bay. It also comes amid a renewed focus on the region’s child safety net by county leaders, who have held multiple hearings on a spate of child deaths in San Jose.
According to a San Jose Police spokesperson, it took until December for police to gather enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant for baby Charles’ mother, Yuqi Yan, and alert federal authorities to block her from fleeing the country. Social media posts and Chinese language media suggest that Yan left the United States and flew back to Shanghai within a month of baby Charles’ death — a claim that police officers and prosecutors have not refuted.
Dr. Jeoffry Gordon, a family physician and member of the California Critical Incidents child abuse citizen review panel, heard Miri’s account at the Jan. 12 meeting and found it “completely shocking.” Gordon said physicians can run X-rays within two minutes to determine if a skull fracture took place.
“There’s no reason for an eight-month delay that’s rational or professional,” he said. “I mean, what the hell do you have a medical examiner for?”
But Steve Baron, a member of the Santa Clara County Child Abuse Prevention Council, who also was in the room when Miri spoke, said that things aren’t always so clear cut.
“You can have a skull fracture and not have it be the cause of death,” Baron said. “So the ultimate decision (on what happened) might take longer, and take more testing.”
But Santa Clara County Supervisor Sylvia Arenas said she was “very concerned that San Jose Police Department did not have what they needed, in a reasonable time frame, so they can hold accountable someone accused of murdering their own baby.”
Arenas’ statement comes a month after she requested an overhaul of the county’s child welfare system during a special hearing held over the fentanyl death of 3-month-old Phoenix Castro.
Santa Clara County’s Department of Family and Children’s Services left Baby Phoenix in the care of her drug-addicted father, despite glaring warning signs that it would be unsafe to send her home with her parents after birth. The county’s child protective services had no abuse reports in baby Charles’ case before his death.
“As we move forward with our work to reform the child welfare system, I intend to ensure that we examine any county process or department that is not sufficiently protecting our most vulnerable children,” Arenas said Friday.
Dean Spivacke, who spent 12 years of his three-decade career at the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office investigating homicides and child deaths, said Miri’s claim that police were left in the dark about a baby’s skull fractures is highly unusual.
“Based on just what you’re telling me, there definitely was a breakdown” in communication, Spivacke said. “That seems really incompetent to me — the detective not bothering to follow up on the autopsy. Or the pathologist or deputy coroner not bothering to call the detective and say ‘Hey, this is what the result of the autopsy was,’” Spivacke said.
Disentangling reports of what led to baby Charles’ death is difficult in a story spanning two languages and continents. Records obtained by the Bay Area News Group indicate the baby’s parents were estranged, and his father told police that he hadn’t seen the boy for more than a week before he died. Baby Charles’ father, Xiao Zheng, rushed to Yan’s apartment on April 4, shortly after she summoned him with a text and a horrific picture of baby Charles.
When Zheng arrived at the apartment, police records say, baby Charles’ skin was “green and white,” beneath his blue and green dragon onesie. The infant’s head was still warm to the touch, a sign of hope to Xiao that the 2-month-old might still be alive. But when they brought him to Valley Medical Center, medical workers quickly determined that he was no longer breathing. He was pronounced dead at 6:49 p.m.
One of the responding officers later told Lieutenant Miri that baby Zheng was “one of the most malnourished children the officer had ever seen,” Miri recalled.
Within a month of the death, photos, documents, and details about baby Charles and Yan began circulating widely on Chinese social media. Many cast blame on Yan over the 2-month-old’s death, even as police officers were still months away from issuing an arrest warrant.
The search for the baby’s mother continues.