Crime
Graham woman pleads not guilty to burning toddler with scalding coffee
A Graham woman is in jail after prosecutors said she threw scalding coffee on her 3-year-old child, leaving the toddler with first-degree burns.
Genevra Dines, 43, pleaded not guilty Monday to third-degree child assault. Court Commissioner Meagan Foley set her bail at $50,000. Court records didn’t list an attorney for Dines.
Charging papers give this account:
The child’s father told police Friday that Dines deliberately poured coffee on their 3-year-old child. Medics took the boy to Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital and Health Center, where he was treated for first-degree burns to the head.
The father said he came home that day and Dines started yelling about bottled water. When he tried to move himself and the child into another room, Dines threw a coffee cup on the dining-area floor near the boy.
The toddler then walked into the kitchen, and the father heard the boy screaming. When he went to investigate, he found the boy crying, with coffee on his head.
Dines told him she’d tripped and spilled the coffee.
She told police she had been angry that the toddler’s father would not let her use the phone, and that she had wanted to go somewhere else. She said she threw coffee on the floor.
Dines said she didn’t hit the boy with the coffee, but that “it got spilled all over us.”
Investigators said she appeared to be under the influence of something.
Dines had been arrested the week before for assaulting the father, and had recently gotten out of jail.
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