Shasta County Woman Convicted Of Torturing 7-Year-Old Boy

REDDING (AP) — A Shasta County woman has been convicted of abuse charges after prosecutors say she brutally beat her boyfriend's 7-year-old son to get revenge on the child's mother.

The Redding Record Searchlight reports that jurors on Wednesday acquitted 30-year-old Rachel Limon of attempted murder and attempted manslaughter, but found her guilty of torture, mayhem and child abuse.

Prosecutors say Limon nearly killed the boy after repeatedly punching him for a week in December 2009. They say she and the child's mother, Melissa Radford, had ongoing tensions.

Limon initially claimed the boy's injuries came from an ATV accident or at the hands of Radford. Deputies said she later admitted punching the boy.

She faces a maximum two life terms in prison when she's sentenced on May 29.

Investigators said the boy — who had 13 broken ribs, a lacerated spleen and liver, two broken vertebrae and a collapsed lung — would have died within a day had he not been treated by a doctor.

The boy, who was not called to testify at Limon's trial, is in the process of being adopted and has returned to school.

Limon's 24-year-old brother, Gregory, was sentenced earlier this year to six years in prison after being convicted of child abuse in connection with the same case.

Although he did not cause any of the child's injuries, he initially refused to let deputies into the home when they arrived there, saying the boy wasn't there.

He later relented, and it was then that deputies found the injured boy in a bedroom.

(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.)