Mom charged with child abuse

The mother of a North Newton toddler was charged Wednesday with abusing her son.

Katheryn Nycole Dale made a first appearance in Harvey County District Court on Wednesday on charges of aggravated battery, abuse of a child and two counts of aggravated endangering a child against her son, 19-month-old Vincent Hill.

According to the court proceeding, Dale is charged with pushing a fork into her son’s mouth, causing cuts to the inside of his mouth on March 25. The complaint also said Dale struck her son in the face.

The complaint said she left her son in situations in which someone else could cause him bodily harm on March 25 and again on Saturday, the day he died.

Dale’s boyfriend, Chad Carr, made a first appearance Tuesday in Harvey County court on two counts of aggravated battery and two counts of abuse of a child.

The boyfriend was allegedly home alone with the child while his mother was at a baby shower when the boy was allegedly beaten to death.

Although the cause of death has not been released pending the completion of the autopsy report, Harvey County Attorney David Yoder said the injuries to the child were grievous.

The child’s leg with twisted unnaturally to the point it was broken. He had cuts in his mouth, an eye swollen shut, fingernails ripped out, a fractured collar bone and bruises from his head to his toes.

Newton Fire/EMS responded to the a 911 call by the boyfriend that the child was not breathing. The toddler was pronounced dead 45 minutes later at Newton Medical Center.

“In my 28 years as an attorney and a prosecutor, I have never seen injuries like this on a child,” Yoder said.

Yoder said he is waiting to decide if he will file homicide charges until the autopsy report is completed.

SRS chooses not to investigate case

The neighbors in the duplex said they called a state Social Rehabilitation Services hotline to indicate they had heard screaming coming from the duplex next door.

Investigation found SRS decided to not pursue further investigation of the report.

SRS said in its report it did not pursue the case because there was no proof the child was being physically harmed or the yelling would endanger the child socially or intellectually.

The report said, “the report does not indicate harm to the child.”

Michelle Ponce, SRS director of communications, said the state’s regional call centers receive 56,207 abuse reports per year and assigns 27,340 of those cases for further investigation.

Call center workers are trained to obtain as much information from the caller about the child, family and situation as possible.

From there, the information is forwarded to a licensed social worker to determine if the case will be investigated further.

Depending on the nature of the allegations, those cases must be followed up on with 24 to 72 hours, Ponce said.

Although local SRS officials said they were not notified about the call center report, Ponce said all the call center reports, even those that are not further investigated, go into an SRS database that is accessible to local SRS workers.

Ponce said in the wake of several deaths of Kansas children, SRS is considering what changes in policy and procedures could prevent such tragedies in the future.

“We are going to review some policies and compare those to the national resource center,” Ponce said. “We want to see if additional policy or procedures need to be in place.”

At a press conference Wednesday, law enforcement officials expressed their frustration that they were never notified about the report.

They urged residents to call 911 if they have any suspicion of a child being abused. This will result in a local police officer being sent to investigate the situation. The identity of the caller does not have to be disclosed, the officers said.

“It is very frustrating,” Harvey County Sheriff T. Walton said. “We might not have been able to prevent it, but we could have knocked on the door and put them on alert that we know something.”

Walton said the SRS social worker did not go to the home before deciding to drop the case.

Neighbors respond

A makeshift memorial has sprung up in the yard of home where the child lived.

A small cross says “We love you.” Stuffed animals mingle among flowers. And a card underneath one vase of yellow forsythia is signed in a child’s hand, “I’m sorry the baby died.”

Noel Pollard, a next-door neighbor, said he had set flowers at the memorial and encouraged others to do the same.

“I would like to see the whole yard full of flowers out of respect for the baby,” he said.

He said his heart went out to the child’s grandparents.

He was not home last weekend and said he saw nothing unusual at the house next door leading up to the death.

He also had harsh words for the male suspect in the case.

“I hope he gets the full extent of the law,” he said.

Another neighbor Gregg Dick said he was stunned something like the child’s death could happen in his sleepy neighborhood.

“I was shocked,” he said. “You don’t think that could happen right across the street in North Newton.”

Dick, who has lived in the North Newton neighborhood for 12 years, said he knew little about the couple who moved into the duplex late last year. He said he never saw anything unusual at the home leading up to the death.

North Newton police chief Ray Classen said the death has left the community reeling.

“It has been very difficult on North Newton. We are mostly a community of retired people. To have something negative like this is shocking to our community. It is very difficult to handle. With it being a child makes it even worse.”

What’s next

Dale also has a 6-week-old daughter who has been placed into protective custody. A hearing on the placement of that child will be at 4 p.m. today.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Carr was being held in the Harvey County Detention Center on $150,000 bond, and Dale was being held on $50,000 bond.

Walton said Carr has a prior criminal history, but would not release what those offenses were.

Carr’s preliminary hearing is set for 1 p.m. April 8, and Dale’s preliminary hearing is set for 3:30 p.m. April 8.