Derrick Coles was convicted in August after authorities accused him of forcing his young boy into military-style exercises and discipline.
SAN ANTONIO — A San Antonio man was sentenced by a judge to 45 years in prison after his young son was found to have been forced into hours of military-style exercises resulting in major injuries before he died.
Judge Joel Perez of the 437th District Court announced Derrick Coles’ punishment Monday, three years and eight months after he was first arrested in connection with the death of his 12-year-old son, Danilo. The boy was found unresponsive after Coles said he fell in the shower, police said at the time; Danilo was taken to a hospital where records say medical staff reported “several suspicious injuries” before he died.
Coles, 36, was arrested shortly after, when authorities found he would make the child do push-ups and hold boxes that weighed around 50 pounds for hours to discipline him.
After a series of delays, Coles went on trial in August, when jurors listened to graphic testimony related to the child’s abuse. Medical experts testified Danilo was beaten, scalded with burning water and forced to do exercise until we went into cardiac arrest and died.
The medical examiner who conducted Danilo’s autopsy added the boy died from toxins produced by too much exercise. He rules the child’s death a homicide.
“He was in full cardiac arrest,” said the emergency room doctor who treated Danilo to the hospital, testifying Coles admitted to the abuse. “He was not breathing spontaneously. He did not have any evidence of heart activity. They got his heart restarted on their way to the hospital, but when he came to us he was not responsive.”
After about two hours of deliberations on Aug. 14, the jury convicted Coles on five of six counts of causing serious bodily injury to a child.
“Not a moment goes by where I don’t cry or shed tears or pray, and wish I was on the other side of that table and not him,” Coles said before he was sentenced Tuesday, despite impassioned remarks from family members. “I made a mistaken.”
His attorney, William Davidson, said he thought Judge Perez was “fair to the verdict,” but categorized Danilo’s death as “a tragic accident, it wasn’t something my client meant to do.”
“Everything that I saw in my room was not my son,” Coles mother, Tawonda, told KENS 5 after the sentencing. “He wasn’t raised like that, he was raised in a church. Everywhere we went, he’s one of the kids who was told how respectable he was. So to hear this, does not sound like that… I don’t have words, because I lost a son today.”
Danilo’s stepmother, Kapri Cheatom, is also charged and scheduled to go on trial at some point.