https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...ake-sense-of-disabled-teens-death/ar-AAn9st6\
LUDLOW, Ky. — Joey Bishop was just like a lot of little boys: Chubby cheeks, a wide smile and a kind of belly laugh that made just about everyone around him giggle.
He grew to love video games, horror movies, baseball and later, girls and cars. Ever the eager student, he earned good grades even after Duchenne muscular dystrophy made it impossible for him to hold a pencil and eventually to use a computer keyboard.
Even as the brutal genetic disorder attacked his muscles and made it impossible for him to run with his buddies, he often would venture outside in his wheelchair to play with neighborhood kids.
No one could hold him back, Terrie Collins-Laytart said last week just days after the 18-year-old's mother and grandparents were charged with manslaughter in his Feb. 11 death.
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Collins-Laytart has known Bishop's mom, Jamie Bishop, now 40, for more than 20 years.
She said she was in the delivery room when Bishop delivered Joey. She was the first one to hold him. She heard his first cries. She felt his first breaths. She considers herself a second mother to Jamie Bishop and another grandma to Joey Bishop.
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But that was not the Joey Bishop that Collins-Laytart saw when she walked into the intensive care unit Feb. 11 at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center after his mom called to say he had a collapsed lung. She mentioned he had a bedsore.
The thin 18-year-old lying motionless on his back connected to monitors and machines couldn't be the teen she knew, she thought when she arrived. She knew it was him only when she saw his mother in the room.
Nothing prepared Collins-Laytart for what she saw when a nurse turned the teen over a little later Saturday morning "to clean him up a bit." That is when she saw the "black, deep hole" on his back.
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Bishop, a doting mother whom Collins-Laytart said "worshiped her children" now is accused of neglect that led to her son's death. She and her parents, Raymond Martin, 67, and Sharon Martin, 65, remained jailed Monday in Covington, Ky., on second-degree manslaughter charges. They face a court hearing Tuesday, where Bishop is expected ask the judge if she can attend Joey's funeral, tentatively set for Thursday.
Bishop told police she last washed her bedridden son about six weeks before his death, according to court records. Her father told investigators it had been months since the teen had been out of his bed.
"The intentional neglect of all three adults living with Joseph resulted in Joseph becoming septic from the infected sores and their failure to see medical assistance resulted in his death," according to the criminal complaint.
The didn't seek help because they feared they would get in trouble for neglect, records said.
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While Duchenne muscular dystrophy has no cure, medical advances are allowing those who have it to live into their 40s or 50s when most used to die in their teens, according to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Joey Bishop's sores exposed muscle and bone, according to court records.
Kenton County prosecutor Rob Sanders said the manslaughter charges will not be amended but said investigators are working to determine if the Martins and Bishop tampered with evidence in the case.
"Additional charges are possible," he said.
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Love, who interviewed Jamie Bishop three times as well as each of her parents, said none of them showed remorse or regret about his death.
"It was like they made him a prisoner,'' Love said.
Stacy Leach, 46, had no idea the teen lived in the house just across the street from her. She never saw him.
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I asked who lived there,'' said Leach, who moved into her grandmother's house about seven years ago. Sharon Martin told Leach that it was just her, her husband, their daughter and their granddaughter.
The Martins often sat on the front porch, but Leach said she rarely saw Bishop because the woman worked. Leach and other neighbors would drive them to the store or run other errands because they did not have a car.
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The mother of autistic twin sons, Leach said she often travels to Cincinnati Children's Hospital and gladly would have taken Joey Bishop at any time — if she only had known.
Court records indicate that the teen was to be seen every six months at Children's, but his last visit was Oct. 9, 2014. Before that, he was seen in 2012, Love said.
Sanders, the prosecutor, is seeking a subpoena to get Joey Bishop's medical records from the hospital.
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