Prosecutor: Texas dad admits disabled son drowned

HOUSTON (AP) — A Houston-area man admitted to a relative that his disabled 10-year-old son, whose decomposing body was found in a cardboard box over the weekend, drowned in a bathtub after he left the boy to go to the store, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

The father, Jeffrey Singer, 45, has been charged with serious bodily injury to a child in connection with the death of his son, Jonathan.

At a court hearing for Singer, prosecutor Amanda Skillern also told a judge that an autopsy found multiple bed sores on the boy, who had been emaciated, and that there were “visible signs of injury upon the body.”

Jonathan, who had cerebral palsy and was partially or completely blind, was found in the early hours of Sunday after the boy’s grandfather called police and said Singer — his son — had stashed the boy’s body in a cardboard box inside the family’s sport utility vehicle.

Skillern told a judge that Singer had admitted to his brother that the boy drowned in a bathtub on April 12, five days before authorities discovered the body. The family lives in an apartment in Pasadena, a suburb southeast of Houston. The grandfather lives in a north Houston suburb.