DALLAS

Mother accused of abuse; daughter, 2, on life support

A woman is facing child abuse charges after police say she glued her toddler daughter’s hands to a wall, kicked her in the stomach and beat her because the child was having problems with potty training.

Joselyn Cedillo, 2, was on life support with multiple internal injuries at a Dallas hospital, The Dallas Morning News reported.

The newspaper, citing police records, said glue and paint were stuck to Joselyn’s palms, and skin had torn away.

Joselyn’s mother, Elizabeth Escalona, 22, was hysterical when she called her own mother Wednesday from her Dallas apartment, police records said. The records show that when the grandmother arrived at the apartment, her granddaughter was unconscious. She took her to the hospital.

Escalona is being held on $500,000 bond on a charge of felony injury to a child, which carries a sentence of up to life in prison. Child Protective Services has taken custody of the girl and her three siblings, said agency spokeswoman Julie Moody.

NEW YORK

Actor Robertson dies at 88; won Oscar for ‘Charly’ role

Actor Cliff Robertson, who played John F. Kennedy in “PT-109,” won an Oscar for “Charly” and was famously victimized in a Hollywood forgery scandal, died Saturday. He was 88.

His secretary of 53 years, Evelyn Christel, said he died in Stony Brook of natural causes a day after his 88th birthday.

Robertson never ascended to the top ranks of leading men, but he remained a popular actor from the mid-1950s into the following century. His later roles included kindly Uncle Ben in the “Spider-Man” movies.

His triumph came in 1968 with his Academy Award role in “Charly,” as a mentally disabled man who undergoes a medical treatment that makes him a genius – until his poignant regression to his former state.

In 1977, Robertson made headlines again, this time by blowing the whistle on a financial scandal.

He had discovered that David Begelman, president of Columbia Pictures, had forged his signature on a $10,000 salary check, and he called the FBI and the Burbank and Beverly Hills police departments.

Begelman served time for embezzlement, but he returned to the film business.