Alexis Medina confers with his attorney, Steven Van Dyke, in court this week.

CNHI News Service

LAWRENCE, Mass. — A father once jailed for breaking his daughter's skull now faces charges of shaking his 3-month-old son to death.

Alexis Medina, 23, was arrested Tuesday and charged with assault and battery on a child. The boy in the hospital died early Thursday from what doctors described as broken ribs, a broken vertebrae and symptoms associated with shaken baby syndrome, police and prosecutors said.

Alexis Medina

Police Chief John Romero said the charges will be upgraded.
Police and paramedics were called to Medina's apartment at 10:15 a.m. Tuesday after receiving word of an infant not breathing.

Medina told them his son wouldn't sleep the previous night, "so he had squeezed him and shook him, trying to get him to fall asleep," wrote Detective Paul MacMillan in a police report. Medina said "he was tired and just wanted his son to sleep."

In the morning, when his son cried again, Medina said he did what he'd done previously: put the infant face down in the crib and pushed on his back until he stopped crying.

"Medina told us he had done that in the past, and it has usually worked and his son would fall asleep," wrote MacMillan. He also told police he regularly played "rough" with his son and "may hug him too hard at times."

Medina also told police he has problems with his wife and his job, as well as money troubles. A judge has ordered him held without bail pending a Jan. 7 hearing.

In 2008, Medina was sentenced to 18 months in jail for causing his daughter's skull fracture, according to court and police records.

Attempts to reach the baby's mother were unsuccessful yesterday.

Details for this story were reported by The Eagle-Tribune of North Andover, Mass.