SAN ANTONIO – It’s been more than a year since 12-year-old Danilo Coles died from severe injuries he allegedly obtained from his father and stepmother.
Since the arrest of Derrick Coles and Kapri Cheatom, nothing has happened legally in this case.
In fact, Cheatom had her case dismissed just months after her arrest. Coles is still awaiting indictment while out on bond.
Danilo Coles was found unresponsive in the couple’s apartment in the 7000 block of Wurzbach Road on Feb. 5, 2022.
The boy was taken to University Hospital, where staff found “several suspicious injuries on the victim,” the affidavit states. He had no brain activity and was pronounced dead.
The arrest affidavit stated that Coles said the boy was “disrespectful” upon moving in, so he made him do push-ups and hold boxes that weighed about 50 pounds as a discipline. Investigators said when the boy couldn’t do more push-ups Coles and Cheatom then hit the boy with a belt, spanking him so hard that he had severe whipping marks and internal stomach bleeding.
KSAT 12 reached out to the District Attorney’s Office about the lack of any kind of movement in the case and first assistant district attorney Christian Hendrickson said the office was still awaiting lab results from the medical examiner’s office related to the autopsy.
“This isn’t a TV show, you know, stuff doesn’t get wrapped up in a half hour,” Hendrickson said. “When we’re making decisions about indicting a case, we have to make sure that that case has everything that it needs for us to be successful.”
Hendrickson assured KSAT that once the final report from the medical examiner was in the case would go to the grand jury.
“We had to make judgment calls on which path to take with the two co-defendants, but we fully intend to present both cases to the grand jury,” Hendrickson said.
Coles’ defense attorney William Davidson told KSAT through email that because of the delay in indictment he would be filing a motion to have the case dismissed.
Typically, a jailed defendant must be indicted within 90 days and for a defendant who is out on bond, the timeframe is about six months.
If and when Coles is indicted, he is facing a first-degree felony charge that, if found guilty, is punishable by up to life in prison.