A couple from Texas has been taken into custody after their toddler was brought to a hospital with critical injuries, leading to the child being placed on life support, according to state police.

Authorities in Collin County have charged Chelsea Rene Berg, 30, with injury to a child. Her boyfriend, Christopher Thomas Alexander, also 30, faces charges of causing serious bodily harm to a child, stalking, and tampering with physical evidence, as reported by the Collin County Sheriff’s Office.

The pair was apprehended on October 16. While Alexander remains in custody, jail records indicate that Berg was released on bail the same day. However, her release came with a stipulation preventing her from contacting her three-year-old son, Dawson Cain Zamora. Subsequently, her legal team filed an emergency motion due to the boy’s health, which was approved, allowing her visitation, as documented in Collin County court files.

On October 14, Alexander reportedly took Dawson to a hospital in McKinney—a sizable suburb located 35 miles north of Dallas—claiming he heard a “thud” and discovered the child injured, as per court documents accessed by Dallas’s Fox affiliate KDFW.

Medical professionals quickly identified the toddler’s severe injuries, which included a brain bleed, bruises at various stages of healing across his body, and injuries to his chest and abdomen, as detailed by law enforcement. The nature and extent of these traumas didn’t align with the account of a single thud, prompting hospital staff to alert local authorities. Consequently, an arrest warrant for Alexander was issued that very day.

Doctors soon determined the boy was suffering from severe trauma, including a brain bleed, bruising in various stages of healing all over his body, wounds to his chest and stomach, and other injuries, according to law enforcement. Such injuries were not consistent with a lone thud, hospital staff determined, and local police were called. A warrant for Alexander’s arrest was issued later that same day.

When questioned by detectives, Berg relayed a narrative in which she left Dawson with her boyfriend at around 7:20 a.m. on the day in question, police say. Then, she received a text about the boy eating lunch. Sometime after that, the boy’s mother received a frantic phone call from Alexander about heading to the hospital, police say.

At the hospital, Berg said she first heard about Alexander’s claim of the purported thud while the boyfriend was in another room. After the so-called thud, Alexander allegedly told Berg he found the boy injured. The child’s mother said her boyfriend did not elaborate beyond that, law enforcement claimed.

Alexander declined to speak with police at the hospital after obtaining a lawyer, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by KDFW.

Berg spoke more freely.

Detectives showed the mother pictures of Dawson’s injuries and, in response, she insisted her son did not have any such injuries when she left him with Alexander while she went to work that day, police say.

On Oct. 19, Berg reportedly received word that Dawson had no brain activity and would be taken off life support. The emergency bond motion was filed so she could “say goodbye to her son before he passes away,” KDFW reports. The court granted the motion the next day.

Dawson’s great-niece started a GoFundMe to raise funds for the family’s medical expenses.

“Dawson was tragically abused,” the online fundraiser reads. “He has already undergone emergency treatment, and doctors expect him to be hospitalized for many months as he begins the long journey of healing—physically, emotionally, and mentally. This has turned our family’s world upside down. No child should ever have to endure what Dawson has been through.”

The boy’s father, who lives in the Texas Panhandle town of Amarillo, said his son was medically dead, but revived by staff at the hospital, in comments to Amarillo-based CBS affiliate KFDA.

“In the CT scan and MRI scan, there was found prior bruising that did not coincide with the healing process of the current bruises that are on him now,” Dahrian Zamora told the TV station. “He was beaten before this attack. The attack that killed him wasn’t the only attack. There’s prior abuse in the home.”