Kayvon Lewis weighed just 17 pounds and was malnourished and dehydrated when he arrived at a Houston emergency room, the Houston Chronicle reported Monday. An average child his age weighs 31 pounds.

He is blind, doctors say, suffers seizures, and can neither walk nor talk.

The mother, Marcia Holliday, 30 is facing a felony charge of injury to a child causing serious bodily injury by omission, the newspaper said.

The boy has been taken into temporary custody by Texas Child Protective Services. CPS first investigated a complaint about the child's care in January 2008, and ordered dietary care and physical therapy.

When brought to the ER last month, he was half the size of a normal toddler, doctors say. They alerted a hospital team that exams children for suspected abuse and neglect, the Chronicle said.

"The only reasonable explanation for his starvation is physical neglect," their report stated.

Holliday, released from jail last week, denies systematically starving her son.

"Everything they (CPS) say is a lie. He wasn't eating or drinking," she said during a recent interview at the jail. "He has a lot of problems going on."

Copyright 2009 by United Press International
All Rights Reserved.

http://www.timesoftheinternet.com/133696.html

Emphasis added by H4K Editor