North Carolina police arrested a 33-year-old man on Monday in connection with the 2021 death of his 3-month-old son.
In May 2021, Guilford County EMS responded to a medical cardiac call involving Sterling Cummings’ son, Waylon Cummings, who died about a week later. Sterling Cummings was watching the baby at the time as his mother was out buying food, according to WFMY.
The infant’s mother returned from grocery shopping and found that a bottle she made for baby was not given to him. Sterling Cummings told her that he had not heard anything from their son before she discovered he was not breathing, WFMY reported.
Waylon Cummings suffered retinal hemorrhaging and had an abnormal MRI, and his father allegedly provided inconsistent statements regarding the injuries that eventually killed him.
In 2012, Sterling Cummings seriously injured his 3-week-old son by shaking him. WGHP reported that the newborn wass blind, has cerebral palsy, and was left with permanent brain damage.
In 2013, Sterling Cummings pleaded guilty to child abuse inflicting serious injury and received a 45-day sentence. The News & Record reported that the newborn’s mother, Breanne Fowler, was also charged but she left the state and was never prosecuted.
WGHP reported that Sterling Cummings was also criminally charged in 2022 with assaulting a woman. He is charged with first-degree murder and felony child abuse in regards to his Waylon Cummings’s death.
Following the 2012 incident, Sterling Cummings’ two children, including the injured boy, were placed into foster care. They were eventually adopted.
“We tried to tell everybody that he was going to do this again,” Tracy Trepcyk, the adoptive mother of one of the children, told WGHP. “I’m just hoping that … under this circumstance, that they get this right.”
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[Featured image: Sterling Cummings/Greensboro Police Department; Waylon Cummings/Facebook]
