(L.A.) Hunter John, 6, Died in a Nursing Home

Case Number: 2022-02995

Los Angeles County is reporting the death of a 6-year-old Caucasian male that occurred in a nursing home.

The coroner’s office has identified the child as Hunter John.

Manner of Death: Homicide

Cause of Death: Sequelae of Traumatic Brain Injury

RIP HUNTER JOHN (November 24, 2015 – March 15, 2022)

The decedent appears to have been the victim in a child abuse incident that happened on April 21, 2016, at a motel in Vacaville, Solano County. The boy’s mother Patricia G. Steve, then 29 years of age, was a transient who inflicted serious injuries on the five-month-old baby.

She had been staying in the motel room with the baby’s father and her older son. It was unit 217 of a Super 8 at 101 Allison Court in Vacaville.

The baby had a fractured skull. A doctor who treated the baby testified that the child has full-body paralysis and remained in a coma – just like when paramedics arrived at the motel responding to a 911 call.

Prosecutors say Steve lied from the outset of her alleged crime by telling paramedics the child had had some sort of seizure. Then she allegedly lied to doctors at the hospital about what happened that morning. Then she allegedly lied to police repeatedly about what happened to her son even after being confronted with evidence of the child’s severe brain damage that doctors suspect was caused by multiple traumatic blows to the head.

Steve was arrested several days after the child was hospitalized. Her last explanation to Vacaville police for her son’s injuries was that they were caused when he fell off the hotel bed a few times.

Doctors at the hospital also found evidence of other recent injuries to the child. There was testimony that altogether doctors found the child suffered more than 10 broken bones in the days, perhaps weeks, before the traumatic brain damage that left him near death.

Steve’s court-appointed deputy public defender tried unsuccessfully to convince the judge that charges against Steve should be thrown out because it was just as likely that the boy’s father had been the one to abuse the boy and that Steve’s self-incriminating statements were just her way of protecting her husband.