February 21, 2018
On Wednesday in Wyoming District Court, prosecutors said Lovily Johnson killed her son, Noah. But police said she didn’t use a weapon or her hands to kill the child — it was depraved indifference that killed him on July 19 in his home on McKee Avenue SW in Wyoming.
“This is a child who had no reason to die,” said Kent County Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cohle. “There is no reason this child would not have thrived, indeed, had he been given normal and ordinary care.”
During testimony, it was alleged Johnson left the child unattended in a
car seat for days in a Wyoming apartment in July. Cohle said the baby was the victim of a continuous lack of care over days.
“This child had gone several days without a diaper change with a wet diaper in contact with the skin,” he said.
He also said the severe rash caused the baby to suffer even more severe dehydration.
“(Noah) should have been about 27 inches in length and he should have weighed about 17 pounds,” Cohle said. “His actual length was 24-and-a-half inches and he weighed 12 pounds.”
He said the only conclusion of the manner of death was
homicide.
“I believe he died of neglect — that is, he wasn’t fed, wasn’t given water, obviously a young infant can’t go very long without those things,” Cohle said.
Jonathan Schildgen of the Kent County Office of the Defender argued the only reason Cohle made the homicide determination was because of information he received from investigators.
Without that, he said, this death could have been ruled accidental.
“(Cohle) based his opinion on what really in my opinion the legal term would be hearsay — hearing what other people said happened to that baby over a certain period of time,” Schildgen argued.
The boyfriend of Johnson’s mother, Harry Woods, took the stand saying he drove the mother and the car seat which held the dead baby to Butterworth Hospital.
“She said, The baby’s not breathing.’ I said, ‘Did you give it CPR or anything to see if it was breathing?’ She said ‘I don’t know nothing about that,’” Woods said. “She said I would get there faster. I said ‘How am I gonna get there faster than an ambulance?’”
Wyoming detectives testified Johnson admitted that she had left the child in a car seat over three days in mid-July at her home and gave him a bottle once or twice.
She said she finally checked on him after he had been silent for hours.
“I asked her if she noticed the smell, she said that she noticed more that his eyes were stuck open and that he wasn’t warm but he wasn’t cold, he was just limp,” Wyoming Detective Robert Meredith said.
Judge Pablo Cortes bound Johnson over to circuit court, where she is charged with first-degree child abuse which led to first-degree murder.
If convicted, the only outcome is life in prison without the possibility of parole.
