"Caretaking boyfriend" goes to trial in child's beating death (Edwardsville, Illinois)

"Caretaking" boyfriend FRANK D. PRICE was supposed to drop off his girlfriend's 5-year-old son at the bus stop for school after he dropped off his girlfriend at work. But it appears that he beat the child to death instead.

http://www.thetelegraph.com/news/openly-30260-little-described.html

Man goes on trial in child's beating death
August 18, 2009 12:53 PM
By SANFORD J. SCHMIDT
The Telegraph

EDWARDSVILLE - The mother of a 5-year-old who died nearly a year ago put her face in her hands Tuesday and sobbed openly as she described her little boy's final days.

"They told me he wasn't going to make it. I couldn't believe them," she sobbed on the witness stand in Madison County Circuit Court, describing a conversation with staff members of St. Louis Children's Hospital.

Tonia Whitehead, formerly of the 1300 block of Lee Street, Cottage Hills, testified Tuesday in the murder trial of her former boyfriend, Frank D. Price, 36, of Cottage Hills, who is accused of battering the boy, Ethan Nathaniel Allen, so hard that it caused the child's brain to bleed and swell.

Price then claimed Ethan's injury was the result of a fall from his bicycle. The alleged beating was on Sept. 7, 2008. The boy died in a St. Louis hospital a few days later when he was taken off life support.

"Doctors will testify the only way that injury could occur would be in a serious traffic accident, a fall from a three-story building, or if the victim's head was slammed into a wall or some other immovable object," Assistant Madison County State's Attorney Ali Summers said in her opening statement.

"They will testify the injury would cause an almost immediate coma," she said.

But defense attorney John Delaney hinted the evidence will show the injury may have occurred at a party two days before his client allegedly beat the victim.

Delaney questioned Whitehead about a "Nerf bat" that a little boy had at the party and about some previous injuries to Ethan, allegedly from routine falls.

Price allegedly beat the boy after dropping Whitehead off at her job in Godfrey. He was expected to take the boy to the bus stop to go to school in Bethalto, but the child never made it to school that day.

Firefighters testified Tuesday that Price and a woman brought the boy to a fire station in East Alton and claimed there had been a bicycle accident. The boy was completely unresponsive and did not appear to have the typical scrapes and "road rash" of a bike accident, firefighter Eric Ruden testified.

The child was rushed to a nearby hospital and later transferred to St. Louis Children's Hospital, where he died.

Price has a previous conviction of battery causing bodily harm, for which he was placed on court supervision. Previous misdemeanor charges of two counts of domestic battery and interfering with a domestic violence report from 2003 and 2004 were dropped.

When the boy died, Price was free on his own recognizance on a 2007 charge of possessing between 15 and 100 grams of cocaine.

Shortly after Delaney suggested multiple accidental injuries, experts from St. Louis Children's Hospital testified there was no way the injuries could have been caused by a fall from a bicycle or other factors, as Price told police officers.

Summers told the jury that Price's stories changed gradually as officers pointed out other factors that cast doubt on his original statements.

Besides the bicycle story, Price also claimed that he accidentally shoved the boy against a couch and that Ethan fell on a playground.

Dr. Maria Spivey, an expert in child abuse, testified that Ethan's death was no accident.

"When you put everything together, it was clear this was a case of inflicted injury," Spivey said.
She described bruises to Ethan's left eye, chest, the back and front of both arms, back and front of both legs, right hand, left foot, front and back of both the upper and lower legs, inner thighs and back.

"I saw a significant amount of bruises on all surfaces of his body," Spivey said.

She said the bruises to areas such as the inner thighs and forearms are notable.

"These are well-protected areas," she said. "There is nothing to indicate an accidental bruising."

On cross-examination, she said any information about a Nerf bat or a routine fall would not change her opinion.

Dr. Matthew Goldsmith, an expert in pediatric intensive care, testified the child was in a coma when he first arrived at the hospital. There was severe swelling of the brain, but surgery and other extensive treatments produced no results.

The injury likely would have caused the boy to go into a coma as soon as the blow was inflicted, Goldsmith said. He said that any delay in treating such a severe injury would increase the risk of death.

The only way the brain injury could have involved a bicycle accident would be if a car also had been involved, he said.

Along with the head injury and bruises, doctors also described injuries to the boy's pancreas, kidney and digestive tract.

Goldsmith said the child apparently had little chance of survival once the injuries were inflicted.
"My prognosis was grave condition, meaning he was unlikely to survive," Goldsmith said. "The swelling never went down. He lost any evidence of brain function. Testing revealed no brain activity. He was declared dead by neurological criteria, or brain-dead."

After the surgery, Ethan failed to improve. His heartbeat and breathing were kept going only by medical technology.

Whitehead testified that Ethan looked healthy and happy when she was dropped off at work about 7 a.m. The next thing she heard about him was around 11:30 a.m., when a police officer informed her that her son was in critical condition.

Her cell phone indicated calls from several other family members, but not from her former boyfriend.

"He never called me at any time when my son was in critical condition," she said.

She said doctors told her that, despite the medications and surgery, the swelling was so bad that Ethan's brain was not getting oxygen.

"I laid down beside him, but he was already gone, and they took him off life support," she said.