RALEIGH –– Police have charged the adoptive mother of a 3-year-old with felony child abuse, court records show.

Apex police have charged Michele Andi Stein, 39, of 121 Homegate Circle, Apex, with one count of felony child abuse, severe bodily injury, according to an arrest warrant filed Tuesday night at the Wake County Magistrate’s Office.

Apex investigators have accused Stein of assaulting Adam so severely March 19 that the child is in a coma at Duke University Hospital. The child has a fractured skull and large bruises on the frontal region of his brain, police reported.

In a court affidavit made public earlier this month, police said that Michele Stein and her husband adopted Adam from an orphanage in China in November.

Police began investigating the Steins when a Duke physician told investigators the child’s head trauma was inconsistent with his parents’ account of how he was injured, court records show.

Records also show Wake County Child Protective Services has previously investigated abuse and neglect reports concerning the child since he was adopted.

Emergency workers took the child on March 19 to WakeMed in Raleigh. He was breathing but unconscious, police reported.

When emergency workers arrived at the home, they found the child at the bottom of a staircase, Apex Police Department detective Worth T. Brown stated in the court affidavit earlier this month.

Michele Stein told the EMS workers that the child had fallen down the stairs earlier in the day while her husband was still at work, Brown stated in the search warrant application. She said she thought Adam was fine and put him down for a nap.