Brooks, the great-grandson of Humble Oil founding investor Percy Turner, is already serving 40 years in a Texas jail for the heinous assault on his stepson, whom he was asked to babysit while his wife was working.<\/p>\n
![\"Mugshot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-29-at-6.06.46-AM.png\")
Charles Edwin Brooks Jr. was ordered to pay $1.1 billion for violently beating his 2-year-old stepson to near death in April 2021.<\/p>\n
The gargantuan payout is the total of $291 million in compensatory damages and $810 million in punitive damages, according to court records viewed by The Post.<\/p>\n
The boy, now 7, was awarded $800 million \u2014 in addition to all of the compensatory damages \u2014 and his parents will receive $5 million each.<\/p>\n
It is the largest verdict in US history for the assault of a child.<\/p>\n
In the civil lawsuit filed by Ball on behalf of her son, Brooks was tasked with watching the then 2-year-old while his mother was at work on April 22, 2021.<\/p>\n
He called Ball hours later, claiming the boy was \u201cnon-responsive\u201d after falling off a kitchen table while in Dallas visiting Brooks\u2019 grandmother.<\/p>\n
In a frightening back-and-forth ordeal, Ball demanded to see her child over a FaceTime call where she witnessed her toddler \u201cbarely breathing\u201d while her then-husband ignored her pleas to call 911, according to court documents viewed by The Post.<\/p>\n
![\"Brooks](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-29-at-6.08.39-AM.png\")
Brooks is currently booked in the San Saba County Jail, serving a 40-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault on a child causing serious bodily harm. Facebook<\/p>\n
Brooks played down the severity of the child\u2019s injuries, insisting he would \u201csleep it off\u201d and had already been thrown into an ice bath to be revived.<\/p>\n
He also threatened his wife that he would \u201csnap her neck\u201d and \u201cf\u2013king kill her\u201d if she called 911.<\/p>\n
Ball ignored the threats and called 911 for her son.<\/p>\n
First responders arrived and discovered that the toddler was severely beaten, unresponsive and had adult bite marks on his legs.<\/p>\n
The child sustained \u201ca traumatic brain injury, chronic respiratory failure, seizure disorder, urethral trauma, and traumatic hemorrhage of bilateral retina,\u201d according to the records.<\/p>\n
Ball\u2019s son will require 24-hour care for the rest of his life, has a tracheostomy tube, is bedridden, cannot walk and cannot survive more than a couple of hours without a breathing machine due to the severity of his injuries.<\/p>\n
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\u201c(The child\u2019s) life is a fraction of what it once was, and he will never grow into the strong, healthy, happy boy he should of because of Brooks\u2019 terrible, violent, horrific behavior,\u201d the original court petition read.<\/p>\n
A years-long court battle took place before a jury reached its verdict on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe claim to value children in our society. This Texas jury stepped up and showed that. Don\u2019t mess with Texas children,\u201d lawyer Tony Buzbee said. \u201cI hope that through this verdict this precious child gets all the care he will need and hopefully make his life as good as it can be made under the circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawyers for Ball and the boy argued Brooks was a career criminal with prior arrests for theft, aggravated robbery, gun charges and drug possession.<\/p>\n
After he nearly killed the child, Brooks was released on bond before he cut off his ankle monitor and attempted to flee. He was later found at a sports bar in South Texas.<\/p>\n
He is currently booked in the San Saba County Jail, serving a 40-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault on a child causing serious bodily harm.<\/p>\n
Brooks is up for parole in 2042, with his projected release date on Jan. 30, 2062, when he is 70.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Texas oil heir was ordered to pay $1.1 billion to the young child he violently beat to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2118,9850,462,27,29,28,734],"class_list":{"0":"post-225702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-child-abuse","9":"tag-lawsuits","10":"tag-oil","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-texas-headlines","13":"tag-texas-news","14":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}