Apex woman bound for prison for abusing adopted son

Apex woman bound for prison for abusing adopted son

BY THOMASI MCDONALD - TMCDONALD@NEWSOBSERVER.COM

RALEIGH -- An Apex woman will spend at least six years in prison after she pleaded guilty today to abusing her adopted son.

Michele Andi Stein of 121 Homegate Circle in Apex was sentenced to between six and eight years in prison after she pleaded guilty to one count of felony child abuse inflicting serious injury, said Melanie Shekita, a Wake County prosecutor.

Apex police in April charged Stein with felony child abuse after her 3-year-old adopted son was hospitalized with severe head injuries.

Apex investigators accused Stein of assaulting her son, Adam, so severely on March 19 that he was in a coma at Duke University Hospital.

The child suffered a fractured skull and large bruises on the frontal region of his brain, police reported.

Police said that Stein and her husband adopted Adam from an orphanage in China in November.

Police began investigating the Steins when a Duke physician reported that the child's head trauma was inconsistent with his parents' account of how he was injured, court records show. Stein told medical workers that the child had fallen down stairs while her husband was at work.

Before the March incident, Adam had been admitted to the UNC-Chapel Hill Burn Center in January with second- and third-degree burns to both hands.

The boy was removed from the home and is now living at a residential treatment facility, Shekita said.