The search for a mother on the lam and her burned child has ended with the boy safe and the mother in custody, Aurora police said today.
A family member brought the child, 2-year-old Sahfonie Elem, to The Children’s Hospital in Denver this morning, where he was checked by a doctor from the burn unit, Detective Shannon Lucy of the Aurora police said in a statement.
Sahfonie had a second-degree chest burn of uncertain cause. The boy now is in the custody of the Arapahoe County Department of Human Services.
The boy’s mother, Ciarra Elem, 20, was arrested this afternoon at a Denver residence, Lucy said.
She is being held in Aurora City Jail on failure-to-appear warrants for offenses unrelated to this case.
The investigation into the case and the boy’s injury is ongoing, Lucy said.
On Friday, Aurora detectives learned of a letter postmarked May 14 and allegedly sent to Ciarra Elem’s boyfriend, an inmate at the Arapahoe County Jail.
“In the letter, Ciarra Elem wrote that Sahfonie Elem had … burns on his chest from a hot iron,” police said in a statement Friday. “Elem wrote that she did not take the child to the hospital for treatment as she was afraid the child would be taken from her. She further wrote that she was attempting to treat the burns herself, ‘but (it) is not looking good.'”
Police in Denver and Aurora tried without success for several days to find the mother and child. An Aurora detective, at one point, talked with Elem by phone, urging her to have a relative or friend take the child to a hospital for treatment, but she refused.
Elem has been arrested several times in the past two years on counts of drug possession and distribution, as well as on traffic and assault charges, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records.
