A thirty-year-old from Indiana received a sixteen-year prison sentence on Wednesday for mistreating his six-month-old son. David Schonabaum and his wife Angel were arrested in September 2023, when the man called emergency services to report that his son had been seriously injured by rats in their Evansville home. According to authorities, the baby had more than 50 rodent bites and had to be hospitalized in Indianapolis.
A report by a local police officer said there was “no flesh” on four fingers and the thumb of the child’s right hand and that “finger bones were exposed.” Law enforcement and paramedics found the little victim “lying in his crib, in a pool of blood.” The baby had bite marks on his face, mouth and extremities. “It is permanently disfigured,” states the report, which adds that the accommodation was infested with rats.
When investigators asked the Schonabaums how they could have allowed the rodents to attack their child so badly, they replied that they “didn’t hear him cry.” A jury found the 32-year-old man guilty of negligence last month. Prosecutor Diana Moers then announced that her team would do everything to obtain “the heaviest sentence possible”. The child’s 29-year-old mother pleaded guilty in September. She will know her sentence at the end of the month.
