Texas boy, 6, dies months after neighbor allegedly attacked him with a baseball bat

Jeremy Diaz, a 6-year-old boy in Texas whom his neighbor allegedly hit with a baseball bat in September, died Tuesday after having spent two months fighting for his life on a hospital ventilator, according to authorities and his father.

“Early this morning I was checking him and noticed a pale face and eyes with no motion. Then his heart stopped,” Jeremy's father, Arturo Diaz, wrote on a GoFundMe page Tuesday. “They tried to resuscitate him, but it was not successful.”

Jeremy was sleeping in his bed on Sept. 11 when Daniel Logan, 39, entered the Georgetown home and assaulted him and another person in the house, the Williamson County Sheriff's Office said. Jeremy's skull was fractured in multiple places, causing swelling to his brain, according to an arrest affidavit.

Logan's mother was also injured. She followed her son into the neighbor's home after she watched him enter through the shattered back door holding a bat and found Jeremy slumped on the floor of his bedroom, according to the affidavit.

After she pleaded with her son to stop, she was hit in the face with a baseball bat, according to the affidavit. She suffered a facial laceration, and one of her lower teeth was knocked out, it said.

The suspect's wife called police to the home just after 5 a.m., the affidavit said. Jeremy and the suspect's mother were taken to the hospital for treatment.

Logan was charged with causing serious bodily injury to a child and aggravated assault of a family member with a weapon, according to jail records. The court ordered a mental health assessment and is holding him on $650,000 bond.

Jeremy was doing much better Saturday, Arturo Diaz wrote on the online fundraiser. The family intended to extubate him because he didn’t need a ventilator anymore. His condition worsened rapidly Monday night when he had a neural storm — a stress reaction caused by brain injuries.

"It was the worst storm we had seen and it came out of no where. It was almost 6 hours of hell on earth — I can only imagine the torture he went through," Diaz wrote.

On the night of the incident, Diaz and his wife were awakened by loud banging from the ground floor of their residence, the arrest affidavit said.

Diaz said in an interview Thursday that as he tried to protect his family, Logan swung the bat at him several times but missed.

"I didn't want to chase him, because I knew somebody was hurt," Diaz said between tears. "I went upstairs, and I saw my boy in a pool of his own blood."

The Diaz family lived next door to Logan for a year and a half. The weekend before the attack, Diaz said, Jeremy waved good morning to Logan and his wife from the patio of their home in the city about 30 miles north of Austin.

"We didn't know that he was going to cross over the following weekend and attack us for no reason at all," Diaz said. "He was just filled with hate."

Diaz said he later noticed Logan had made a hole in their wooden fence to cut a grapevine that Jeremy had planted in the garden several days before the attack.

The sheriff’s office said that it is awaiting autopsy results from the Travis County medical examiner’s office and that if the findings warrant it, it will “present the case to a grand jury for the charges to be enhanced to Capital Murder.”

Logan's attorney, Marc Chavez, said that his prayers go out to the Diaz family and that he hopes they find peace in this tragic time.

“While the allegations sound troubling, we ask everyone to reserve judgment until all the facts come to light, especially while we investigate issues related to serious mental illness,” Chavez said.

Diaz said it was hard to guide Jeremy through his stay in the hospital because he couldn't give him answers for why someone might have hurt him.

During his time in the hospital, Jeremy needed a spinal tap, suffered infections and throat swelling, and needed to wear a temperature-regulating suit. His father wrote on the fundraiser that Jeremy wanted to be Iron Man for Halloween and was “fighting for his life just like a superhero.”

“I was there when he took his first breath and saw him take his last,” Diaz wrote in an update Tuesday. “No parent should see their children buried before them.”

The family plans a memorial service at a local church.

Jeremy loved jiujitsu, soccer and playing the piano, Diaz said in the interview. He was also a role model for his 3-year-old brother, who was in the house when the incident happened.

Diaz said his son should be remembered for his immense kindness. Once, his father recalled, Jeremy gave away his Transformers toy to another boy at school.

“He had such a beautiful look on his face because he had given one of his favorite toys to a friend who asked for it,” Diaz said.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com