Joseph White And Heather Coomer-White Avoid Prison After Bizarre Case Of Toddler Eating Crib

Joseph White And Heather Coomer-White are parents of twin 2-year-old toddlers, but the two kids were taken from the parents, according to a report Thursday in the Johnson City Press, and put up for adoption after a macabre case in which one of the twins ended up in the hospital after eating the wood from his own crib.

The mom and dad, residents of Johnson City — a city of about 65,000 in east Tennessee, not far from the state’s border with North Carolina — entered guilty pleas in the strange child neglect case last week, under plea bargains that let them avoid prison if convicted. In fact, each of the parents, 34-year-old Joseph and 32-year-old Heather, would have each been hit with mandatory bids of 15 years behind bars if they had gone to trial on the single counts of neglect and had been found guilty.

Both the mom and he dad had been in jail since their arrests in May of this year after what doctors found in their 2-year-old boy’s digestive tract during a visit to Niswonger Children’s Hospital in Johnson City back on May 8. Joseph White and Heather Coomer-White were arrested five days later, after an investigation by police and the state Department of Children’s Services.

The parents took their toddler to the hospital after the little boy had been experiencing a severely upset stomach. Joseph White told doctors at the hospital that he believed the toddler was suffering from a stomach virus of some kind.

But when doctors checked the little boy out, they didn’t find a virus. Instead, suspecting some kind of impacted bowel, they took x-rays and discovered something far more shocking.

The 2-year-old’s intestinal tract was packed full of painful, sharp wooden shards and splinters.

The medical experts at the hospital asked Joseph White and Heather Coomer-White if they had any idea how the dangerous debris could have ended up in the boy’s digestive system. The parents replied that they did know. The child had a habit of eating the wood from his own crib.

But they didn’t realize that the boy’s habit could pose any problems, they reportedly said.

Needless to say, the boy’s fondness for chewing on wood was a problem — a big problem. The child was immediately placed in pediatric intensive care and doctors had to perform a series of emergency surgical procedures, according to a report on WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The doctors found and were able to remove wooden splinters from the boy’s stomach as well as his upper and lower intestines. They also needed to remove his appendix.

But the case did not end there, and it quickly became clear that the situation was even more serious than the Whites had let on. After the boy’s admission to the hospital, police investigators accompanies by a DCS case manager paid a visit to the White household — where they found Joseph White in the process of sweeping the floor when they arrived.

But he hadn’t come close to finishing, and the investigators took photographs showing wooden splinters littering the floor in the twins’ bedroom — and both of the cribs in the bedroom bore deep chew marks in the wood, some of them multiple inches deep.

They also found evidence of vomit on the floor.

The boy’s parents then admitted that their child chewed at the wooden rail almost non-stop and they actually did know that this practice could be harmful. But for some reason, they did nothing about it, taking no steps to chew-proof the cribs, or do anything at all to prevent the toddler from his dangerous habit of eating wood.

“The child and his twin sister were removed from the Whites’ custody and have been adopted,” The Johnson City Press reported in a story last week.

Joseph White and Heather Coomer-White were released from jail after entering their guilty pleas, marking the start of their five-year probation period.

[Featured Photo via Johnson City Police booking photos]