The 27-year-old father testified Monday in state District Court that he ran into Isaiah's room to find his son's legs pinned between a large wooden dresser and an unforgiving metal railing on the small white bed where the boy slept.
"He kept telling me, 'Hurt. Hurt,' " the soft-spoken Apodaca told jurors Monday during the trial of his girlfriend, Jennifer Stephenson — the boy's mother — on a charge of first-degree child abuse resulting in great bodily injury....
What Apodaca never saw, according to his day-long testimony, were ropes, strings or any other type of ligature that may have been used to tie the boy to the bed. That differs from how police initially described the case beginning in January 2010, when both Apodaca and Stephenson were first jailed on first-degree child abuse charges...
Apodaca acknowledged Monday that he initially figured the dresser accidentally fell on Isaiah, but then changed his account when police told him that wasn't possible when they questioned him a year ago.
"So police told you over and over someone would have had to do this to Isaiah?" West asked in cross examination.
"Yes ma'am," Apodaca replied.
Apodaca, who spent six months in jail after his arrest early last year on the child-abuse charge, also said he believes the dresser was either pushed onto his son by a longtime personal enemy from elementary school who was trying to date Stephenson at the time — that man has never been named as a suspect in the case — or by a ghost.
It also emerged during cross examination that police, according to West, had suggested to Apodaca that his son had been "tethered."