Pattern of abuse alleged

Petition in court says boy, 3, suffered repeated injuries in foster home before his April death.

Kim Kozlowski

The Detroit News

James Earl Bradley Jr. suffered repeated abuse in the Van Buren Township foster home he lived in at the time of his death, according to a petition filed Tuesday in Wayne County Juvenile Court.

Though no one has been charged in James' April 13 death, state officials are petitioning to terminate Christina Woodward's and Lasana Karva Jr.'s parental rights to their two children, ages 15 and 11, who were removed from the home on Monday.

"They're very upset," Ronald Gold, an attorney for the couple, said of the filing's allegations. "That court is so dysfunctional. It's programmed and set up to remove children."

James, 3, died of blunt force trauma to the head six months after being placed in the married couple's foster home, and the petition offers the first glimpse into the painful months leading up to his death.

Among the details: James was treated for injuries on two separate occasions before his final hospitalization. On April 9, James was taken to Oakwood Annapolis Hospital in Wayne and then airlifted to University Hospital, where he died four days later, after being diagnosed with bleeding on the brain and a pelvic fracture.

Woodward told investigators she found James crying and gasping for air in the family's master bedroom.

Four doctors said they could not determine when James was injured, but his behavior would have been abnormal in the days leading up to his hospitalization.

He would have been "tired a lot, vomiting, have a change of appetite or display some abnormal physical facial expressions or strange activity," doctors told investigators. Washtenaw County Medical Examiner Bader Cassin said the fatal injury was sustained the day before James was taken to the hospital.

The couple and their children insisted to investigators that James had been acting normally and had not been injured, but a medical report from U-M disputed their story: "The reported history of normal behavior until just before the EMS was called is not consistent with the severity of his symptoms at the time EMS arrived."

Other conflicting reports were noted in the petition, including the couple's parenting methods.

Children who attended the day care Woodward and Karva ran out of their home told investigators James routinely got into trouble for wetting his pants and getting into the sink.

"(Woodward) would whip him with a long black belt and sometimes with her hand," children at the day care said.

"She would whip him on his legs with her hand when he wet on himself," Linda Edwards, whose three sons attended the day care, told The Detroit News. "James would just cry and cry."

Karva said his wife, the disciplinarian, never used physical punishment.

The couple became foster parents in November, nine years after Woodward, 34, was convicted of domestic violence against Karva, 37. Woodward denied having a history of domestic violence or arrests when she applied to be a foster parent and apparently ran the day care out of her basement even after being denied permission, according to the petition.

Two months after James was placed with the family, James' birth mother noticed a bump on his forehead during a visit and took him for medical treatment. Two months later, he was treated after being burned by scalding water from a faucet. The foster care agency cited Woodward after that incident for turning the hot water temperature up very high at night.

Woodward told slightly conflicting stories to police and emergency and medical officials about the night she found James.

Initially, she said she and her 15-year-old daughter were on the main floor of the home and heard a noise upstairs. They found James on the floor next to a blanket and pillow. But Woodward later changed her story, saying her daughter was already in the bedroom when she went upstairs.

Detectives say the investigation is ongoing but court documents indicate that the couple, along with their daughter, son and their maternal grandmother, are under investigation.