Another boyfriend says fall down the stairs killed girlfriends 18-month-old daughter

[Jerri Blank]

South Charleston Man Charged In Baby's Death
South Charleston Police have charged a man in connection with the death of an 18-month old baby girl.


Twenty-one year old Larry Hayes Junior is jailed on charges of child abuse resulting in death. Police say the young Rebecca McDaniel was in his care when she was seriously injured last week. The child's mother is Hayes' live-in girlfriend. She was at work at the time the child was injured.

Police say the incident happened last Thursday. According to a criminal complaint the mother, Meredith Bush said Hayes called her at work to say something was wrong with the child. When he arrived with the baby, it wasn't breathing.

The baby was taken to CAMC Women's and Children's hospital where it lived on a ventilator with no brain activity until she died Sunday.

According to police, Hayes initially said nothing had happened to the girl while he watched her. He later told authorities he fell down a staircase while carrying the child and landed on her.

However, the medical examiner says the child suffered multiple blunt force traumas to the head.

He was charged when police received the autopsy report and remains jailed on $500,000 bond.
http://www.58wchs.com/includes/news_items/7/news_items_more.php?id=3207&section_id=7

http://wchs-am.tritondigitalmedia.com/includes/news_items/7/3207/larryhayes.jpg
Larry Hayes Junior

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/7145/rebeccagracemcdaniel201.jpg
Rebecca Grace McDaniel
BORN: April 2, 2009
DIED: October 3, 2010
LOCATION: South Charleston, WV

Obituary Link (http://hosting-tributes-19171.tributes.com/show/Rebecca-McDaniel-89539914#obituary)

*****

I looked for this, I didn't see it. Sorry if it's a double post, my blood is boiling after all. look at this baby, who could do this??! I'm so mad I can't see straight!

[evervigilant]

Another beautiful baby snatched away from her family.

[Kindly One]

Worthless boyfriend? Check. Babysitting while the mother worked? Check. Changing story? Check. Ridiculous excuse involving improbable accident? Check. Stupid chin pubes? Check. Dead child? Check.

God, these stories are so depressing. Poor little girl. Stupid mother. Just because he's a good lay and goes halves on the beer does not mean he's going to be able to look after your kids without snapping when they cry. And sooner or later, they all cry.

So far I'll stick at calling the mother stupid. If it turns out he has a criminal background, sits around smoking pot all day or has a history of violence, I'll upgrade to baying for her blood.

[Hellsbells]

Just because he's a good lay Have you confirmed this Kindly One

[RobotSocks]

Vibrators make for good lays too, and you don't have to worry about them killing your children.

[Kindly One]

Have you confirmed this Kindly One

No, quite right, I simply assumed she must have some reason for wanting him around, and he's not much too look at (even ignoring the chin pubes), has a cretinous air about him and - again, assuming - sends her out to work while he kills her kid.

But, as they say, when you assume you make an ass of you and me... Shame upon me. For all I know he's on the short list for the next Nobel Prize in Physics, they fell in love over a common interest in the great French philosophers and he can't even get his winky in the air...

[Tundratot]

I'd call this one a spud.

[Dakota Valkyrie]

http://i0.simplest-image-hosting.net/168bf183b2abe8bc9188aacc163dd507/20110830-03.jpg
Larry Allen Hayes Jr., 22, was convicted after a weeklong trial that extended into Saturday. Hayes held his face in his hands as, one by one, each juror confirmed his or her verdict.

A medical examiner testified last week that blunt-force trauma caused a snaking 5 1/4 inch fracture in 1-year-old Rebecca McDaniel's skull, which claimed her life last October.
[...]

Hayes faces up to 40 years in prison when he is sentenced Oct. 28.

On Sept. 30, Hayes played video games in his living room all morning in a South Charleston home he shared with his fiancée, Meredith Bush, the toddler's mother. Bush had left for work earlier that morning.

Hayes has maintained that nothing out of the ordinary happened that day. He said he kept an eye on McDaniel, at one point making her some pizza bread and giving her some gummy worms.

He said he did not notice anything wrong with the girl until that afternoon, as he drove to the IHOP on Corridor G, where Bush worked. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw that Rebecca was slumped over in her car seat.

On Friday, Dr. Manuel Caceres, medical director at CAMC Women's and Children's Hospital, testified that McDaniel's injuries were consistent with shaken baby syndrome with impact -- meaning that Hayes probably shook the child before her head struck a hard surface, like a floor or table.

But Dr. Thomas Young, a forensic pathologist based out of Kansas, testified via video that the child's fracture, which covered over a quarter of her skull, could have been caused by an accident that she had several days before her death, when she fell from a stair in her home and hit her head on a plastic, toy four-wheeler.

Bush, who was watching Rebeeca at the time, immediately took her to the hospital for what the doctors had assumed was a leg injury, said Hayes' lawyer, Richard Hollicker. They never scanned the girl's head despite her recent complaints to her mother that her head hurt, Holicker said in his opening statement.

Caceres asserted that McDaniel's fracture had formed two hours prior to when Hayes and Bush rushed her to the hospital, while Young testified that the injury had shown signs of healing -- indicating that the girl's fall onto the toy four-wheeler days before could have caused the fatal wound.
http://wvgazette.com/News/201108290824

[Tundratot]

Apparently the testimony of the defense expert did not convince the jury.

Bush looks like a Neanderthal. No doubt the jury didn't think he looked very trustworthy.

The doctors didn't look at her head. She slumped over! How does that equate to a leg injury?

[Jerri Blank]

Judge denies new trial in child’s death by abuse

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A judge on Monday denied a South Charleston man's request for a new trial on charges of child abuse causing death.

In August, a jury found that Larry Allen Hayes Jr., 21, caused the death of Rebecca McDaniel, the 18-month-old child of the woman he was living with. According to prosecutors, Hayes shook the girl, causing her to strike her head on a hard surface.

On Monday, Kanawha County assistant public defender Richard Holicker, told Judge Paul Zakaib Jr. that several errors during the trial warrant a vacated verdict and a new trial for Hayes.

Among those errors, Holicker said that the judge violated his client's right to face his accusers by refusing to enforce a subpoena for a doctor who had testified that examinations of the toddler pointed to signs of blunt force trauma.

Holicker cross-examined Dr. Allen Mock for about an hour and a half, but later learned from his own expert witness that Mock's credentials were in question. Mock ignored Holicker's subsequent subpoena to appear in court, Holicker said.

"We had an absolute right to call Dr. Mock," He said.

Holicker also argued that at least one juror in the case appeared to have voted Hayes guilty even though he acknowledged that the toddler's death was probably an accident, according to an affidavit authored by an investigator for the public defender's office.

The juror also said that the state "did not prove that Larry did anything to Rebecca McDaniel," according to the affidavit.

Kanawha County assistant prosecutor Jennifer Meadows said that a juror cannot be impeached, and a case cannot be set aside, based on what happens during the deliberation process.

During the trial, Holicker repeatedly objected to prosecutors showing photos of McDaniel's autopsy to the jurors. Most of the photos, some of which included depictions of the girl's brain on a tray, were gratuitously gruesome and only prejudiced the jury, Holicker said.

Meadows said the state's medical experts could not have given effective testimony without using the photos as visual aid.

In September 2010, Hayes was watching the girl while her mother, Meredith Bush, was at work.

According to court records, Hayes said Rebecca was acting normally all day. When he went to pick up Bush from work, the girl appeared to be sleeping in the back seat of the car. He noticed a problem only when he reached back and shook her foot and the girl did not respond.

Hayes later admitted to police, in what Holicker contends was a coerced confession, that he fell down the stairs while holding the girl. Her injuries caused a large fracture that spanned more than five inches on her skull, prosecutors said.

Zakaib denied Holicker's motion. Holicker said he plans to appeal the conviction.

http://wvgazette.com/News/201201090141?page=2&build=cache

[jenny7795]

October 28, 2011


The judge on Friday sentenced Hayes to the maximum of 40 years in prison.



http://www.wsaz.com/news/headlines/Man_Arrested_and_Charged_with_Child_Abuse_Causing_ Death.html