Department spokesman Scott Wilson said medics responded to an apartment in East Bremerton Monday after receiving a call from a man, later identified as the fiancé of the boy's mother, who reported that a child had possibly suffered a seizure.

The boy, who was unresponsive, was transported to Harrison Medical Center in critical condition with a severe head injury.

Wilson said that while en route to the apartment complex, the investigating patrol deputy learned that the same child had fallen out of a second story window about a week and a half earlier, but the incident was never reported to police or medics.

Sheriff's detectives later learned that the mother, who had taken the child to Harrison Medical Center, had given a conflicting report to emergency room staff that the little boy had been injured after falling from playground equipment.

As an investigation began, detectives said that at the time of the boy's injuries, the boy was being cared for by the man who called 911.

Police said that during an interview the man claimed that the boy had been looking at some items on a night stand in a bedroom when he fell backward and struck his back and head on the night stand. Doctors who examined the boy, who had since been transferred to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital, told detectives that the boy's injuries could not have been received by falling on a night stand.

"Had the child been riding unrestrained in the back seat of a vehicle that was involved in a head-on collision, causing the child to fly through the front windshield head-first, he would have sustained a less serious injury that he had received," a doctor told police.

The pediatric intensive care unit doctors said there appeared to be evidence of past abuse to the boy's body.

After further questioning Monday night, sheriff's detectives arrested the man and booked him into jail on charges of suspicion of first-degree assault of a child.

The man's bail was set at $500,000.