Selah Brown suffered second- and third-degree burns over 65 percent of his body after his father put him a bathtub filled with scalding hot water. The recovery and related treatments will overshadow much of Selah's young life; while his mother, Dedra, must scramble to raise the necessary funds for his care.
HAMILTON — Selah Brown recently played with two of his cousins at a park on Nottingham Way in Hamilton, climbing on a play set, riding a stationary bicycle and tossing an Elmo doll high into the air to see if he could get it stuck in a tree.
“He’s just a regular 4-year-old. He likes to do what 4-year-olds do best,” his mother Dedra Brown said. “He gives me a heart attack sometimes.”
But on Wednesday, two weeks after his fourth birthday, Selah was in a hospital in Boston undergoing skin graft surgery, one of many treatments he has received since he was severely burned as a 2-year-old.
It’s a surgery he will have many times until he stops growing, his mother said, explaining that scar tissue doesn’t stretch, and constant medical care will be required until he reaches adult size.
“Each time he grows he has to keep going back,” Brown said. “When he grows, the skin he has now, it doesn’t grow.”
On June 18, 2011, when Selah was 2, he was taken to visit his father, Beau Holder, in Trenton to celebrate Father’s Day. The father should have been under supervision, Superior Court Judge Thomas Sumners has said. But the child was left entirely in Holder’s care, and something terrible happened.
“Apparently his father placed him in the bathtub filled with scalding hot water,” his mother said. Selah suffered second- and third-degree burns over 65 percent of his body. The recovery and related treatments will overshadow much of his young life; while Brown must scramble to raise the necessary funds for his care.
Holder pleaded guilty in June to second-degree endangerment of a child and earlier this month was sentenced to six years in prison. His lawyer has said Holder never intended to hurt the boy.
“To Miss Brown, to the Brown family, to my son: I am sorry,” Holder said in a court appearance Aug. 2.
Dedra Brown said she is unhappy with the plea agreement and Holder should be locked up for longer. “He needs more time,” she said.
At the sentencing, Sumners said the six-year term followed the sentencing guidelines for the second-degree charge. A charge of aggravated assault was dropped in exchange for Holder’s guilty plea.
Despite finding Holder guilty of endangerment, Sumners acknowledged he “had some mental flaws that would affect his ability to properly care for his son.”
The judge said no ruling can change what happened to Selah.
“There is no resolution in this case that would make anybody any better,” Sumners said. “The acts committed against him were disgusting and unconscionable.”
Selah has spent the last two years recovering at Shriner’s Hospital in Boston and just recently returned home, his mother said. He will return to Shriner’s for treatments such as the skin-graft surgery he had on Wednesday. And as the grafts continue, his body resembles a patchwork more and more.
“Since he wasn’t burned on his right side of his body, they take skin from the right side of his body and put it on the left,” Brown said.
When he was treated after being scalded, fluid began to build in Selah’s lungs and doctors put in a tracheostomy tube to allow them to drain, she said. The young child will finally see that removed at the end of this summer.
“When he was burned, his lungs got infected, so he has that until October of this year,” Brown said.
The nonprofit group Angel Flight provides free flights to and from Boston, Brown said.
But the medical bills for all of Selah’s surgeries, physical therapy and unexpected trips to the emergency room have added up, and friends have offered to hold fundraisers to help offset the cost.
A fundraiser at Carella’s Chocolates and Gifts on July 27 raised nearly $1,000, organizers said, and a picnic fundraiser is scheduled for Aug. 31 at Bromley Park from noon to 7 p.m. Selah will be there, likely running around and playing with his friends, Brown said.
For more information about the fundraiser or to make a donation, call “Big Rob” Blakely at (609) 631-0355 or 519-9566, or Kelvin Bellamy at 587-8100.
Contact Alyssa Mease at amease@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5673.
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