Father pleads not guilty in death
Arraignment changed for mother of 4-year-old who died of brain injury
A man and woman charged in the March death of their 4-year-old son were in court Monday for the first time since being indicted in Bowie County.
Benearl Lewis, 24, appeared before 5th District Judge Bill Miller with Sylvia Delgado of the Bowie County Public Defenders Office. Delgado entered pleas of not guilty on Lewis’ behalf to charges of capital murder, felony murder and injury to a child with serious bodily injury. Lewis can only be convicted of one of those offenses in the March 8 death of D’Money Lewis.
Khadijah Wright, D’Money’s mother, has been charged with injury to a child by omission. At the time of the youngster’s death, a Child Protective Services care plan prohibited Wright from leaving D’Money alone with Lewis, according to a probable-cause affidavit.
Wright appeared Monday before Miller without a lawyer. Her attorney of record, Jasmine Crockett of Texarkana, was not in court. Assistant District Attorney Lauren Richards said she thinks her office sent Crockett notice of the hearing.
Miller rescheduled Wright’s case for arraignment June 25.
Richards said she received the full investigative file from the Wake Village, Texas,
Police Department last week. The evidence in the case includes a large number of documents from CPS, and certain information in those records must be redacted before copies are handed over to the defense as part of the discovery process. Richards said she anticipates giving defense lawyers the “voluminous discovery” later this week.
“The only thing outstanding is the full and complete autopsy report,” Richards said.
Lewis and Wright are being held in the Bowie County jail, with bail set at $1 million each.
Wright allegedly left her job about 2 p.m. March 6 at a local manufacturing plant without clocking out or telling anyone she was leaving after receiving a text from Lewis that there was an emergency. A little more than two hours later, the couple came upon a traffic accident being worked by Texarkana, Texas, police at West Seventh Street and Bishop Lane on the Texas side. The couple told officers they had a child in the car who was unresponsive and not breathing and that they lived in the 200 block of Redwater Road in Wake Village.
While in cardiac arrest, D’Money was taken by ambulance to Wadley Regional Medical Centers. Wake Village police Investigator Todd Aultman’s report states he observed a large area of bruising on the boy’s back and “strap” marks on D’Money’s legs and back. Medical staff members at Wadley told Aultman the boy was suffering from a brain bleed and bruising to his back and chest, “as if he had been kicked.”
After initial treatment at Wadley, D’Money was airlifted to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock. Medical staff there told investigators that the boy’s injuries were inconsistent with the account allegedly provided by his parents and more likely the result of abuse.
Lewis and Wright allegedly told investigators that D’Money had “jumped or fallen from a deep freezer and that his eyes rolled back in his head,” the affidavit states. Lewis allegedly claimed that after determining the child wasn’t breathing, he and Wright decided to take the boy to the hospital in their car.
After D’Money’s death March 8, his body was taken to Dallas for an autopsy. Among the damage documented to the child’s body was a “space occupying subdural hematoma” that had caused the youngster’s brain to “herniate down into his spine,” the affidavit states. Also noted at autopsy were bruising to the child’s legs and back and tissue damage in his kidneys.
If convicted of capital murder, Lewis faces life without the possibility of parole or death by lethal injection. The state has not made an announcement on whether the death penalty will be sought.
If convicted of injury to a child, Wright faces five to 99 years or life in prison.