GIST: "From day one, Tyree Bowie said Dante Mullinix seemed like he was in bad shape.
When Bowie first saw Dante, he testified late Thursday afternoon, the 2-year-old appeared bruised and unkempt.
“He was dirty," he said. "Clothes was dirty. Sneakers was dirty. Hair was nappy. He had bruises on his face.”
The 43-year-old began testifying in his defense Thursday. He gave his account to a jury of how he met Leah Mullinix and her son in the summer of 2018, how they bonded, and circumstances from his perspective that led to Dante’s death a month later.
Bowie is charged with murder and child endangerment, accused of severely beating Dante the night of Sept. 6 and causing significant injuries that led to the child’s death.
The defense disputes the allegations and holds to Bowie’s insistence that Dante choked on a cookie in his car, stopped breathing and lost consciousness. He sent texts and told police that he tried giving the boy a crude CPR to restart his breathing before rushing him to York Hospital.
The trial ended Thursday evening while Bowie was still on the stand as part of his attorney Farley Holt’s case.
The jury was given an opportunity to stay home Friday as Judge Gregory Snyder said the courthouse would close at noon due to winter weather forecast. The courthouse will also be closed Monday in observance of Christmas.
Testimony is scheduled to resume Tuesday as the trial enters its fourth week.
Bowie told the jury he first met Mullinix on Facebook that August. They chatted, with Bowie first telling her he thought she looked like someone he worked with.
During the conversation, he said Mullinix told him her boyfriend kicked her off his property, and that she and Dante were homeless.
Mullinix testified earlier in the week she had been with a man named Hector Rivera since that June. River, according to trial testimony, was an alleged Latin Kings gang member nicknamed “Holiday.”
Bowie said he offered to have Mullinix meet him at his mother’s house along North Hartley Street on Aug. 18 where she and Dante could get a shower and food. He also offered to buy her diapers and wipes for Dante, and he’d pay for gas for her car.
In exchange, he said he asked her to drive him up to Harrisburg where his car was impounded following a DUI stop the day before.
When they met that day and he first saw Dante, he said the boy was dirty, soiled. He said Dante looked like he “exploded” in his diaper, and poop was visible through his jeans and up his t-shirt.
Mullinix then gave Dante a bath inside, and Bowie saw his skin.
“I’d seen bruises on his leg. I’d seen bruises on his back. His penis area looked red,” he said.
Earlier testimony and evidence at trial showed Dante had a genital infection that was initially believed to be balanitis. The infection may have started after she left Rivera’s place, Mullinix indicated.
That day they met, Bowie asked about the bruises, and he said Mullinix blamed Rivera.
“She told me her boyfriend ‘Holiday’ beat on Dante,” he said. “She told me she believed he might’ve molested Dante.”
Bowie said she felt as though she'd be threatened if she reported the abuse. He also alleged that day was the first time he saw Mullinix use makeup to cover bruises on Dante’s face.
Bowie brought up the bruises again over the next couple weeks, he said, alleging Mullinix would pass them off as Dante falling or hitting his head on objects in frustration. He said he initially had reservations about being around Mullinix and Dante since he feared people would assume he caused the boy’s bruises.
But Bowie and Mullinix continued seeing each other through the first week of that September.
Bowie said he took her and Dante to a park in West Manchester Township to hang out; bought pizza and burgers for them at times; gave her $90 for a hotel stay once, though she spent most of that on necessities and a new phone charger instead.
They also exchanged hundreds of texts and had video chats through Facebook Messenger, some of which prosecutors shared with the jury over the course of the trial.
A “kind of boyfriend-girlfriend-type” relationship developed, according to Bowie.
According to the testimony of several witnesses, Mullinix apparently still saw Rivera and associated with other people, including a man named Albert Castro, nicknamed “Ghost.” She essentially lived out of her car at the time.
Testimony showed she left the car parked behind Castro’s mother’s home along South Queen Street for some days, and that she and Dante apparently slept in the car at times.
Castro’s mother, Arlene, along with her longtime boyfriend and granddaughter, testified Thursday that they had Dante in their house one time around Aug. 29.
They each described a stench coming off him and gave him a bath. There, they said they saw his body riddled with bruises, and his genitals were inflamed from the ongoing infection.
The three family members each looked at exhibits of selfie photos of Dante and pointed out he looked healthy in the photos in contrast to the skinny child they saw that day.
Bowie also testified that the Dante he saw didn’t look as healthy as he did in the photos shown at trial.
“He never looked that healthy,” he said, suggesting the photos might have been taken long before he met the two.
Bowie helped Mullinix and her son enter a domestic abuse shelter that Aug. 30, according to trial testimony. The allegations against Rivera were given as the reason to gain access.
Mullinix testified that Dante was frequently crying, fussing and throwing tantrums by that time.
Complaints were raised at the shelter, which led to Mullinix and her son being taken to York Hospital twice over the course of a few days so he could get looked at.
A nurse documented bruises on him during one visit, and medication was prescribed for his genital infection.
Bowie, Mullinix and Dante hung out for much of the day on Sept. 6, following a third visit to the hospital.
That evening, Mullinix said a migraine grew intense enough that she wanted to go back to the hospital for treatment.
Bowie dropped her off and agreed to babysit Dante in the meantime.
They were together for about two hours, which included a stop at a gas station before heading back to the place where Bowie was staying.
He and Mullinix messaged each other in that time, with Bowie once saying Dante took a spill out of his car.
Mullinix said the last she saw her son conscious was on a video call a little after nine that night. He seemed normal, she said, except for a scrape on his chin.
Texts indicated Bowie planned to head back to the hospital so they could visit Mullinix. But then around 10 p.m., they were on another video call.
Mullinix testified Bowie told her he fed Dante a cookie — a Teddy Graham, according to evidence — he choked and stopped breathing. He repeated his description of the situation in texts to her that night.
Bowie brought Dante limp and unconscious into the hospital, and he was rushed to the emergency department.
Medical staff documented fresh, red bruises on the boy’s body, including bruising on his lower jaw and what looked like fingerprints on his neck, and a bite mark on his arm.
Dante was flown to Hershey Medical Center later that night. He died nine days later after he was kept alive on a ventilator.
An autopsy found Dante died from a traumatic brain injury along with strangulation and suffocation injuries. Prosecutors allege that injury and the others seen on his body had to have been caused in that time he was with Bowie.
A competing medical conclusion for the defense found Dante died by choking which cut off oxygen to his brain. The opinion supports Bowie’s assertion the boy choked on a cookie.
While Bowie has been charged with murder, Mullinix also faces a felony count of child endangerment as part of the case. She has denied injuring her son.
Her next hearing is scheduled for January.
Rivera has not been charged in the case, according to court information."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resurce. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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