“He was beat like a man.”
That is how the grandmother of 1-year-old boy Kybrel described the alleged incident that led to his hospitalization with a traumatic brain injury to Pittsburgh outlet WPXI.
Kybrel was admitted to the hospital on Nov. 23, after authorities found him unresponsive in the Pittsburgh apartment where his mother’s boyfriend, Lyndon Henderson, was babysitting him, according to a criminal complaint obtained by local outlet WTAE.
The baby boy’s unnamed mother told authorities that she left Kybrel with Henderson, 24, while she was at work, and when she returned home to check on the 1-year-old, she found him unresponsive on the couch, according to the complaint.
Kybrel, who sustained a traumatic brain injury and multiple bruises, was rushed to the hospital, WTAE reported. He also suffered a stroke and broken neck vertebra and, once admitted, was placed on a ventilator because his brain was deprived of oxygen and swelling, according to WPXI.
He has also since been placed on a feeding tube, as he is currently in a medically induced coma, per WPXI.
After the November incident, Henderson was arrested and charged with assault, but those charges have since been upgraded to attempted homicide, Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh told WPXI.
“My office will always seek justice for victims,” Walsh told the outlet in a statement. “Children are innocent and our most vulnerable, and I will prosecute offenders who commit crimes against them vigorously and to the fullest extent the law allows.”
Washington County Correctional Facility
At the time of his initial arrest, Henderson told officials that Kybrel fell off the couch and onto the floor after he spun him in circles and placed him on the furniture, WPXI and WTAE reported. According to the official complaint, Henderson also told authorities that the 1-year-old had recovered and was smiling.
In the same complaint, however, the baby’s physician told officials that the brain injuries he suffered are “100% unequivocally the result of child abuse.”
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Speaking to WPXI after visiting her grandson in the hospital, Carla Darrell, the baby’s paternal grandmother, said, “It wasn’t good. He was on all kinds of machines. He was beat like a man. A man beat my grandson.”
“He didn’t do [anything],” she added of the 1-year-old. “There was nothing possible he could’ve [done] to do this to him.”
Darrell also said that had she known Kybrel needed a babysitter, she and her son — the boy’s father — would have happily obliged. “Nobody else had to watch him,” she told WPXI. “We would’ve watched him.”
Henderson is currently being held in Washington County Jail under no bond, awaiting a court appearance later this month.
Darrell told WPXI she hopes he stays there, saying, “I don’t believe he belongs out of jail. He belongs there.”
“He belongs where he deserves,” she added. “He deserves [to be] in there.”
