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1-Year-Old Dies, Investigators Want To Know What Happened

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – At a rambling house in the Goulds section of Southwest Miami-Dade, police investigated the apparent scalding death Thursday of a one-year-old boy.

Neighbors said they heard hysterical screaming coming from the yard of the home on Southwest 217th Street.

"We heard screams and hollering. My brother ran over to try to help with the situation, and found baby, the one-year-old was lying on a dirty mattress, outside in the yard on a dirty, nasty mattress," said neighbor Molita Cunningham.

Cunningham's brother Randy Joseph gave the boy CPR, while waiting for rescue.

Joseph told CBS4's Gary Nelson that the mother of the child told him, "she telling me 'please save my baby, I don't want to go back to jail.'"

"And when the paramedic came, they zip his zipper jumper down," Joseph explained. "The paramedic said 'oh my god.' I said 'what the hell.'"

Neighbors say the child was unresponsive, not breathing and had no pulse.

"When the paramedics zipped down the baby's onesie, the baby was burned from his neck to his knees, just completely burned," Cunningham said.

Joseph said that a friend of the mother told him the baby had been burned the previous evening in Naranja, where the mother lives.

Neighbors said the mother was a frequent visitor or part time resident of this home, along with more than a dozen other occupants of the house.

"She brought the baby from Naranja like that, and one of the older siblings apparently accidentally poured hot water from the stove on to the baby," Cunningham quoted one of the children as saying.

Police confirmed none of the neighbors accounts as they investigated long into the afternoon.

There was no explanation as to why the mother, according to neighbors, took her child to that house in Goulds instead of the hospital.

Late Thursday afternoon police had not released the name of the dead child, or that of his mother, or provided any details surrounding the death.

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