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07:32 AM CST on Thursday, February 19, 2009
By STEVE THOMPSON / The Dallas Morning News
stevethompson@dallasnews.com
Darlene Diles spent the first 17 days of her life in her mother's care before an injury on Jan. 30 left her with severe brain damage.
She spent the remaining days of her life hooked to tubes and machines inside Children's Medical Center Dallas, where doctors blamed her head injury on child abuse.
On Tuesday afternoon, Darlene's father decided to allow doctors to take her off life support. The 35-day-old baby died several hours later in her grandmother's arms, he said.
"It was a hard decision, but I'd rather for her to just go like that than have to suffer the rest of her life," said the father, Michael Diles, 39. "They said she would never have been able to walk, talk, open her eyes or hear or anything."
The decision came four days after a Dallas County juvenile district court judge granted Diles the right to participate in decisions about his daughter's medical care. He and the mother, 19-year-old K.C. Denise Brown, were not married and split up before Darlene's Jan. 13 birth.
The judge's ruling came against the wishes of Brown. Her involvement in her daughter's injuries is under investigation, but she has not been charged with any crime.
"She expressly stated she didn't want Mr. Michael Diles to make that decision," Brown's court-appointed attorney, Angie N'Duka, told the judge during a hearing Friday. She said her client spoke to her from Terrell State Hospital. Brown is being treated there after having suicidal thoughts following her daughter's injuries.
Contacted on Wednesday, N'Duka said that her client had not authorized her to speak publicly about the case.
After Friday's hearing, family members and court-appointed advocates attended a meeting on Darlene's continued life support.
"The hospital has expressed concerns that someone is going to need to make a medical decision on what is going to be in the best interest of the baby," one of advocates wrote in a status report.
Diles, who works as battery technician, said he has five other children. He said that he remained on good terms with Brown and visited their infant daughter regularly.
"She was just a darling," Diles said. "She smiled a lot."
On Jan. 30, Darlene stopped breathing. According to a doctor's report filed in court, Brown said she accidentally dropped her daughter on the kitchen floor of her southeast Oak Cliff apartment.
Brown said that Darlene cried afterward and that she tried to feed her but soon realized the infant wasn't breathing. The report says Brown then called her mother, who came over to help.
Once there, Brown's mother tried rescue breathing at the instruction of a 911 operator until paramedics arrived.
The doctor reported that he found no skull fracture or scalp swelling consistent with a fall. Instead, he found internal head injuries consistent with being shaken, court records say.
It wasn't the first time Brown had been implicated in a case of abuse. In 2006, she lost custody of Darlene's half sister – who was no more than a month old – after that infant suffered a broken arm and other injuries.
In that case, Brown told authorities that she yanked the infant's arm as she slipped from her grasp, court records say. The other injuries were left unexplained. That daughter, now 2, was placed with a relative.
A funeral for Darlene Diles had not yet been scheduled late Wednesday. Her father said arrangements would be handled by Lott's Mortuary in Dallas.
Diles said he held his daughter for a while after she was taken off life support, and again after she died.
"I went back to the hospital after she passed, and held her for about an hour when she didn't have no tubes or nothing on her," he said.
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021909dnmetdeadbaby.3815d7b.html
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