Man who microwaved baby says he was under stress

Joshua Royce Mauldin, the 19-year-old Arkansas man accused of burning his 2-month-old daughter in a microwave in a Galveston motel room last week, was indicted yesterday on a charge of felony injury to a child — and he's blaming the incident on stress, police say.

Mauldin was working at a Sonic restaurant in Warren, Ark., when he claimed that God called him to be a minister. He decided to begin his ministry in Galveston, so he, his wife, their daughter and his mother moved there and checked into the Quality Inn on the Seawall while they looked for permanent housing. Last Thursday, Mauldin was alone in the motel room with the baby when he called the front desk for help, saying the baby had a bad sunburn and was bleeding. He asked the hotel staff to call 911; when police showed up, Mauldin told them that he had tripped and spilled boiling water on the baby. Later, he decided he was drinking the boiling water and spilled it — needless to say, officials suspected something wasn't right with the story, but they were shocked to discover that the baby's burns were actually caused by a microwave. "I've been doing this for a lot of years and actually it brought tears to my eyes," Galveston Police Sgt. Annie Almendarev told KHOU. "The baby is burned on the left side here, and it's just really bad. Her hand is so swollen — if you've ever touched something hot, you know you get that big boil on your hand — it looks like she's holding a ball in her little bitty hand. It was just heartbreaking."

The baby is being treated at the UTMB Shriner's Burns Hospital, where she's had two skin grafts and is listed in critical but stable condition. Surgeon Dr. Art Sanford said no one at the hospital has experience with microwave-induced burns on humans; in fact, the hospital staff only found three other instances nationwide in which children were thought to have been burned in microwaves. Police believe Mauldin's baby was burned for between 10 or 20 seconds, which Sanford said medical research shows can burn skin and muscle.

Galveston police haven't elaborated on what kind of stress Mauldin said he was under. He's being held in the Galveston County Jail on a $250,000 bond; if he's convicted, he could face 99 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.