A teenage father has been arrested after police in California said he bit the nose off his one-month-old son because he was frustrated with the infant's crying.

Police in Fairfield said 18-year-old Joshua Cooper is being held in jail on suspicion of child cruelty and aggravated mayhem.

Officers said they received a call yesterday from a distraught woman who said her baby was bleeding from his nose.

Doctors later determined the child suffered a skull fracture, a brain haemorrhage and that one third of the child's nose had been severed.

The child is in a stable condition at Oakland Children's Hospital.

Police say they are still trying to determine how the skull fracture and brain haemorrhage occurred.

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