LAGRANGE, IN — Authorities in LaGrange County have arrested an Iowa man in the death of a 4-year-old boy in LaGrange County.

The LaGrange County Prosecutor’s Office on has filed preliminary charges against Dylan Diericx of Eldridge, Iowa, alleging one count of Neglect of a Dependent Resulting in Death, a Level 1 Felony.

Shipshewana Police were called to 345 Van Buren Street on August 19th for a call about a young boy unresponsive and in critical condition. He was taken by helicopter to a Fort Wayne hospital, where he died.

According to a probable cause affidavit from the prosecutor’s office, the boy was the son of Diericx’s girlfriend, and Diericx said they were engaged in “horse-play” in the cab of a semi when the child was injured.

Diericx told investigators that he had tossed the boy on the bunk in the sleeper of his semi, and he hit his head on a “fixed object,” the affidavit said. He said the boy then began convulsing and went unconscious.

The prosecutor’s statement said the boy’s injuries were not consistent with that explanation.

The statement from the prosecutor’s office said the child suffered “fractures to his clavicle and shoulder blade, bruises and abrasions on the right and left side of his face, bruises on his forehead, laceration and blunt force trauma to the back of the head, bruises to genitalia, injury and bleeding from the victim’s anus, cuts to his arm, a busted lip and burns around his mouth and on various parts of his body”.

Diericx is in the custody of the LaGrange County Jail awaiting formal arraignment on the charges.

The case remains under investigation. The prosecutor’s office says dditional charges may be filed later.