Trial begins in endangering children case

A trial began Tuesday in Highland County Common Pleas Court for a Hillsboro man charged with one count of second-degree felony child endangering.

Gregory Kiley, 34, was indicted on the charge in February, stemming from an  incident that allegedly occurred on April 24, 2010 at the park at the old school in Belfast.  

In opening arguments, Highland County Prosecutor Anneka Collins told the jury that on that date, Kiley was babysitting a 3-year-old child. 

"(At that time, the child) walked, talked, played, ate, laughed," Collins said. "(But the child) nearly died that day, and has not been the same since."

The child collapsed at approximately 4:30 p.m., was unresponsive and barely breathing.  He was taken to Highland District Hospital, and was later transferred to Children's Hospital in Columbus, where a portion of his skull was removed due to swelling of the brain. Since that initial surgery, Collins said, that skull portion was replaced, then removed again. 

The jury, she said, will hear testimony from expert witnesses that will say the traumatic brain injury the child suffered was caused by being severely shaken.

Over the course of the trial, which is scheduled for three days, Collins said the jury is going to hear, "a sad story." 

As family members of the victim heard Collins describe the events that are alleged to have taken place, and the condition the child is in now, sobs could be heard in the courtroom. 

"He is confined to a wheelchair. He says fews words. He eats through a feeding tube. He wears diapers. He doesn't walk," Collins said. 

He can only say a few words now, such as "mom" and "no."

Collins said that Kiley's defense attorney Jim Boulger will try to "explain away" what happened because, "that's his job," but that ultimately the jury will see that Kiley was the only adult who was with the child when the incident occurred. 

"That story doesn't add up. (The child) is in a wheelchair, because of this man," Collins said. 

Boulger told the jury that there is no doubt the child suffered a traumatic brain injury, but that it was not caused by Kiley, and suggested that it might have been caused by a preexisting condition. 

Kiley had often watched the child before the day of the incident, and he has three young children of his own. Two of those children were present on April 24, 2010, and were 3-years old and 2-years-old at the time. 

Boulger said that Kiley picked up the children in Fayette County and took them to his mother's in Adams County on April 24. The three aforementioned children were playing outside with four other kids. Boulger described an incident in which Kiley found the victim and  the other 3-year-old outside crying. Neither of them would say anything, but they were pointing to a dog, and it is Kiley's belief, Boulger said, that the dog knocked them down because the victim had muddy paw prints on the back of his shirt. 

After that incident, Boulger told the jury, at approximately 3:30 p.m., Kiley took the children to the park in Belfast. There, he took a photograph of the children that shows the victim minutes before he collapsed, with what Bougler called "formations around the eyes and forehead."  

Boulger said the victim had a medical condition in that he has "an unusually large skull. When he was 15 months old, he had no teeth." 

Doctors took a CAT scan at that time to determine if anything was wrong, and that when he was 3-years-old and eight months, he was still wearing pull-ups training pants. 

Boulger said on April 24 Kiley noticed that something was wrong with the child after he got off a merry-go-round at the park. 

"He began to get worse and worse, until he dropped his head in Greg's arms and goes into signs of seizure activity," Boulger said. 

Bougler said the defendant suffers from epilepsy himself, and that he is very sensitive to such scenarios. He put the children in his van, with the victim across his lap and drove back to his mother's home. His mother then took the child to Highland District Hospital, while Kiley tried to contact the victim's mother. 

At the HDH emergency room, a CAT scan was performed that Boulger said "read as negative" but that because something was clearly wrong with the child, he was transported to Children's Hospital in Columbus. There, in the pediatric intensive care unit, a physician read the scan again, and "thought he saw a subdural hematoma ... It was noted (the victim) has an extremely large skull. He was stable overnight but in critical condition." 

The next morning, just after 7 a.m., it was noted the victim had reactive pupils and mobile limbs, and the order was given to remove him from sedation. A short time later, Boulger said, "there was a dramatic change in his condition." His eyes were not reactive, he limbs were no longer mobile. 

"Something changed for the worst," Boulger said. 

Just after 9 a.m., he was "rushed to the operating room" to try to relieve the pressure inside his brain, and it was discovered that there was a "midline shift," Boulger said, which "caused the brain structure to alter. 

"He was suffering brain damage that he would never overcome," Boulger said. 

The child stayed for two months in Children's Hospital and was able to "make a partial recover," Boulger said. 

The question that jurors must answer for themselves, Boulger said, is "how did this happen?"

There will be lots of testimony with medical terms, but something that is "crucial" jurors need to note, he said is that an opthamologist who studied the victim after brain surgery noted that a retinal hemorrhage (bleeding in the eye) "was associated with Terson Syndrome, not Shaken Baby Syndrome." The injuries, he said, were associated with inter-cranial trauma, "and are not a characteristic of Shaken Baby Syndrom." 

Boulger said the jury will see photos of the child taken at Children's Hospital, but that HDH personnel will testify that he did not look like that when he was brought to them, and his appearance is a result of the surgery. 

Shaken Baby Syndrome was not something that was initially brought up by physicians, rather from a person at the Child Advocacy Center, Bougler said.

"No one will claim they saw Gregory Kiley do anything," Boulger said. 

The state, who is represented by Collins and Assistant Highland County Prosecutor Molly Bolek, and assisted by Det. Sergeant Denny Kirk of the Highland County Sheriff's Office, began presenting witnesses following opening arguments.