A Thurston County Superior Court judge set Rachel Bryan’s bail at $500,000 and ordered her held in jail on suspicion of second-degree assault of a child.
Bryan, 20, was arrested after an ambulance was sent Tuesday to the mobile home she was staying at in the 20000 block of Grand Mound Way, and medical personnel found her 4-month-old son unresponsive.
The child was taken to Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in Tacoma, where he remains on life support.
According to court papers, Bryan admitted assaulting her baby.
“… I shouldn’t have done it, but it wasn’t me,” Bryan told a sheriff’s detective. “When I get mad, my bi-polar comes out.”
Bryan also told the detective, “I wasn’t nice to my son. I was very rough with him,” court papers state. She also said she was frustrated because her baby would not stop crying.
According to staff members at Mary Bridge Hospital, the infant was not expected to survive, and “if in fact he does, he will be significantly impaired,” court papers state.
Four days before the infant was hurt, Child Protective Services began investigating whether Bryan was a fit mother.
CPS began investigating based on a nurse practitioner’s concerns about Bryan’s behavior toward her son during a visit to a health care facility in Lewis County. The nurse practitioner also was concerned about a lump on the child’s back.
The CPS social worker learned that Bryan had recently moved to Thurston County from California.
According to what Bryan’s mother told a court official:
Bryan was diagnosed with mental problems when she was 15 or 16. She dropped out of high school in the 11th grade. She frequently stopped taking the medications she was prescribed to stabilize her moods. When she turned 18, she ran away to California with the father of her son; the father is currently in prison.
Jeremy Pawloski: 360-754-5465 jpawloski@theolympian.com
