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Testimony links boy's killing to stress disorder
By BILL DURYEA
TAMPA -- George Christopher Edmonds has held both of his sons dead in his arms. He watched helplessly as the first boy wandered in front of a pickup and was crushed. The second son Edmonds killed with his own hands late one night when, helpless with frustration, he banged his 3-month-old's head twice against a wood door to stop his crying. The question facing the jury in Edmonds' first-degree murder trial is whether the horror of what Edmonds saw that morning in May 2000 on a carnival ground outside Chicago so traumatized him that he could not understand the consequences of what he has admitted doing to Christopher Lee Edmonds on March 20. On Wednesday, the jury heard Edmonds, a bear of a man who has spent his life assembling and operating carnival rides, sob uncontrollably as he described the sight of his 27-month-old son Austin's head trapped under the truck's tire. "My heart collapsed," he said. Later Wednesday, Dr. Michael Maher, a psychiatrist, explained the lasting impact of what Edmonds witnessed. Edmonds, he said, suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, a disease common to war veterans and others who are emotionally overwhelmed by traumatic events. That disorder, which affects a person's ability to cope with situations similar to the original trauma, coupled with Edmonds' lack of knowledge about child care, meant that Edmonds did not know the consequences of what he was doing, Maher said. "Mr. Edmonds is a big, not book-smart, not psychologically sophisticated guy," Maher said. "He likes to fix big machines . . . He's a lot more comfortable with a car than with a kid." Early on March 20, while his girlfriend was working the nightshift, Edmonds, 33, woke to the sound of his son crying. He tried to feed Christopher a bottle, but the child threw up. He changed his diaper, he held the baby on his shoulder, but nothing worked. Then he grabbed the baby and shook him, he told detectives. " 'Come on,' I said, 'shut up,' " Edmonds said. " 'Why won't you shut the f--- up?' " Then he hit the child's head twice against the bedroom door of the couple's trailer. He went to sleep with the child resting on his shoulder. When he woke up about two hours later, Christopher wasn't breathing. "He did not understand he was holding his son in a rough, potentially lethal manner," Maher said. "He did not understand that just shaking him could kill him." Was he legally insane, he was asked by the defense attorney. "Yes," Maher answered. But the jury had heard testimony from another doctor earlier in the day that may make it hard to accept that Edmonds was a grief stricken man who didn't know his own strength. Dr. Daniel Spitz, who performed the autopsy on Christopher Lee Edmonds, detailed the unusual procedure of removing the child's ribs during the examination. This was the only way, Spitz testified, to reliably count the 63 old and new fractures found on the baby's 24 ribs. The autopsy also found two fractures to the baby's skull, bruising from fingertips on the baby's chest and abdomen and a tear in the baby's liver. Those injuries were recent, Spitz said, but some of the rib fractures were old enough to have occurred soon after birth. "The location, extent and various ages of the fractures indicate these were intentionally inflicted," Spitz said. Sadly, Christopher's injuries were overlooked during an earlier visit to Brandon Regional Hospital when the baby was diagnosed with dehydration. A radiologist looking for intestinal problems did not notice the multiple rib fractures.
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