Rinkuben Patel: Mom Denies Breaking Multiple Bones Of Her 5-Week Old Baby Girl, $500K Bond Set

Rinkuben Patel, a 25-year-old mom, left neighbors shocked when she was arrested this week for, according to police, somehow assaulting her five-week-old baby daughter so savagely that she left the helpless newborn with numerous broken bones — and bleeding on her brain. The incident happened over Thanksgiving weekend, and this week Patel was charged and ordered held with a $500,000 bond, described by prosecutors as a potential flight risk if she isn’t locked up.

Patel was originally given a $10,000 bond, according to a WNCN News report, but after she appeared in court Wednesday alongside an interpreter because the young mom speaks only limited English, a judge was persuaded to bump up that bond requirement — by a factor of 50.

Rinkuben Patel, 25 yo mom charged in felony child abuse case inv. her 5 wk old,arrives to court #ABC11Eyewitness pic.twitter.com/8BLXhImEHh

— Nicole Carr (@NicoleCarrABC11) December 16, 2015

Prosecutors also revealed in court Wednesday that Patel has been in the United States for about two years, entering on an apparently valid student visa. But she has never attended school in this country, the prosecutors said. Her country of origin has not been publicly revealed, though the family name “Patel” is extremely common in India.

Patel lives in a Spring Lake, North Carolina, apartment complex with her husband and an older couple, who according to reports by WTVD-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina, owned the gas station where Patel and her husband were employed. But after questioning Patel’s husband and the older couple, Spring Lake police ruled out all three as suspects.

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View the latest WTVD report on the Rinkuben Patel case in the video below.

According to what investigators were able to find out, the mom was the only person the apartment permitted to even touch the infant — an assertion which, if accurate, leaves Rinkuben Patel as the only possible person who could have inflicted the baby’s terrible injuries.

Curtis Worthy, landlord for property in which Patel and the other occupant of the apartment lived, told WTVD that he had no clue about what was going on between the mother and child, and that the Patels appeared to be a normal, healthy family — at least outwardly.

“They had a cookout once or twice a year, swim in the pool once or twice a year,” a befuddled Worthy told the station. “They would invite family friends over. Just a normal family as far as I could tell.”

So what happened? That’s what investigators are trying to figure out, even as Patel denied injuring her baby daughter when she made her court appearance on Wednesday.

What they do know is that at about 9:30 p.m. on the night before Thanksgiving, November 25, Emergency Medical Technicians responded to a call at the Mont Drive apartment reporting a baby experiencing seizures.

When the little girl was rushed to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, then on to Duke Medical Center, doctors found that the baby had bleeding on her brain — and that wasn’t all.

The infant was suffering from multiple broken ribs, breaks in both ankles and a broken femur, or thigh bone. The next day, doctors also discovered that the five-week-old girl had also endured a broken collar bone.

We’ve confirmed Spring Lake baby at center of felony child abuse case is 5 wks old, not 6 mo, mom arrested today pic.twitter.com/1r6dIi8HNs

— Nicole Carr (@NicoleCarrABC11) December 15, 2015

The doctors called child services workers, who in turn brought in the Spring Lake police department, who began their investigation — determining first of all that the horrific injuries to the small child were not caused by accident, but had been inflicted deliberately.

On Tuesday, after questioning Patel and the other adults in the apartment where she lived with the baby, police arrested the young mom and slapped her with a single charge of felony child abuse inflicting serious physical injury.

Patel’s lawyer, Mark Hearp, told Judge Stephen Stokes that the baby’s medical records had not yet been obtained from either of the two hospitals that examined and treated the little girl over the Thanksgiving holiday, and that therefore it was premature to charge Patel with physical abuse. Hearp also said that the other adults in the apartment should remain under suspicion in the case.

Both Rinkuben Patel and her five-week-old baby girl suffered from seizures on a regular basis, an ailment that may have played a part in the child’s injuries, the defense lawyer claimed. The baby has been placed in the custody of Social Services.

[Featured Photo via WTVD Screen Capture]