A 30-year-old North Texas mother has been charged with capital murder after her 3-year-old son, hospitalized since October with severe injuries, died Sunday at a Dallas hospital.
Chelsea Berg was arrested on Monday on the upgraded charge. Her boyfriend, 30-year-old Christopher Alexander, remains jailed on original felony charges of injury to a child and tampering with evidence.
Dawson Zamora died on December 7 — his father’s birthday — at Medical City Dallas, according to the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s office.
“His gift to me was his final breath, and we are now forever interlocked with my birth and his death,” the boy’s father, Dahrian Zamora, wrote on Facebook. “He held on to spend one last birthday with me and refused to go until then.”
McKinney police first responded on October 14 after Alexander brought the unresponsive child to Medical City McKinney. Medical staff reported severe brain trauma, brain bleeding, and extensive bruising that did not match Alexander’s claim that the boy fell off a bed.
Arrest affidavits show text messages in which Berg was aware of earlier injuries to her son, per the Independent.
Zamora said Monday the capital murder charge against Berg stems from “her lack of effort in protecting our children.” In a separate post, he said that he would “not rest until justice is served.”
He also expressed for the support he has received from the community, stating, “The people that have come to my aid have shown me that there still is good in this world and Good will conquer evil. The public has proven to me that I’m not alone in this. I’ve had to carry nothing by myself because of the community around me and that just brings tears down my face of thankfulness for you all.”
Alexander has been held in Collin County Jail since October; Berg was initially arrested and charged with injury to a child, but had been free on bond until her re-arrest.
Capital murder in Texas is punishable by death or life without parole.
