news-record.com

RALEIGH -- A 28-year-old Raleigh man who tried to revive his unconscious infant son last month after the child's mother called 911 has now been charged with the boy's murder.

The child, Christopher Scott Childers Jr., died Sunday at WakeMed in Raleigh, nearly two weeks after he was taken there for treatment. On Monday, police charged his father, Christopher Scott Childers Sr. of 216-B East Lenoir St., with first-degree murder.

Police think Christopher was the victim of shaken baby syndrome. On the day of the incident, police charged Childers with felony child abuse, accusing him of injuring his son's brain by "shaking the child back and forth," court records show.

Childers has been in the Wake County jail since Jan. 21 when emergency workers were called to his home by Rachel Lynn Collins, the mother of his son.

It was just before 5:45 a.m. when Childers and Collins awoke in the bedroom of their apartment near Shaw University and found their 5-month-old son unresponsive, according to a 911 recording made public Monday by the Raleigh Police Department.

"My son is not breathing," Collins told the 911 dispatcher.

"Please hurry," she added after giving the dispatcher her address. "We woke up, and he ain't breathing."

Collins then told the dispatcher that her husband had the child, who was lying flat on his back. The dispatcher asked Collins to lay the child on the floor, place one hand on the infant's forehead and the other under his neck and shoulders in order to perform CPR.

Collins had run downstairs but doubled back to hand the phone to Childers.

The dispatcher told him to place his mouth over the child's mouth and nose and blow two puffs of air into his lungs.

"I didn't see his chest rise," the father said moments before the paramedics arrived. "Oh, my God."

Childers was being held under $50,000 bail for the felony abuse charges, a jail spokesman said Monday. He is now being held without benefit of bail, the spokesman said.