A 31-year-old South Pasadena man inflicted injuries on his infant son over a three-week period as a way of getting back at the child’s mother for no longer giving him attention and making him do “a mom’s job,” a prosecutor told a jury during closing arguments of the man’s trial Wednesday, Oct. 2.
Prosecutor Jon Hatami told the jury Christopher Lashun Richmond was an abuser, someone who needed to be in control and that he wanted all the attention from the boy’s mother and “when he didn’t get it, he hurt the person she loved so much.”
Richmond is charged in Pasadena Superior Court with murder in the death of his son, Cash, who was about 6 months old when he was taken off life support in February 2023. Cash was hospitalized, Sept. 25, 2022 after Richmond called 911 to report Cash had choked on milk and wasn’t breathing.
Doctors discovered Cash had suffered five rib fractures, a leg fracture, a clavicle fracture and a spinal fracture that left him without the ability to move his arms, legs or head in the days leading up to the 911 call, Hatami said. Cash had also suffered hemorrhaging in both eyes and bruising to his neck and right ear.
“In seven weeks, the defendant broke him down and finally killed him,” Hatami told the jury, which was handed the case for deliberations Wednesday afternoon.
Richmond also faces charges of assault on a child causing death and charges of injuring a child’s parent and assault with a deadly weapon in two separate domestic violence incidents involving the boy’s mother.
Richmond’s attorney, Michael Hawkins, maintained prosecutors didn’t have enough evidence to prove that Richmond inflicted the injuries on his son. He also said the case was filled with bias from the boy’s mother, detectives and doctors who all pointed the finger at Richmond without investigating claims he made that his son had choked on milk while he was feeding him the day paramedics were called to their home.
“We’re not getting the full side of the story from the government or its witnesses,” Hawkins said.
The attorney said detectives and doctors ran off of information provided by the boy’s mother and never looked into Richmond’s claims. Detectives never investigated the bedroom where Richmond and his son were before he called 911.
Hawkins added that Richmond’s actions at the time paramedics arrived and after Cash was taken to a hospital could be associated with dissociation, not signs that he didn’t care about his son’s condition.
Hawkins also disagreed with Hatami’s argument that Richmond was the sole caretaker of Cash for the three weeks in which the injuries were inflicted, claiming that gaps in the mother’s work schedule at a nearby salon meant she had time to be home with the boy, as did her then-teenage son.
He also told the jury they should wonder why the lead detectives on the case didn’t testify during trial.
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Prosecutors said the violence spanned from five to nine episodes over three weeks and alleged Richmond squeezed the boy hard enough to fracture his ribs on two occasions and shook Cash hard enough to cause the spinal fracture.
They accused Richmond of suffocating the boy until he stopped breathing, then waiting at least five minutes to think of a story before calling 911, and lying about doing CPR while on the phone with dispatch.
Paramedics testified during trial that Richmond looked like he couldn’t care less, Hatami said. Body-worn camera video played during his closing argument showed Richmond at one point stepping over paramedics as they worked on his son to grab something from a television stand.
Richmond showed no interest in his son while he was in the hospital, Hatami said.
The prosecutor also pointed to statements from character witnesses on Richmond’s behalf, in which they said he had a good mother and sister, made good grades, went to college, played football and planned everything in his life.
“This is not someone who had all this trauma in his childhood and did this,” Hatami said. “He had everything. He killed his son because he’s a bad person. That’s it.”
Hatami told the jury he was not going to label Richmond as “dad,” and said he was bothered by the defense argument that Richmond, a first-time father, would default to the boy’s mother for medical issues because she previously had another child and had experience. Instead, he argued, parenting is a shared responsibility.
“You’re not a dad because of biology,” he argued. “You’re a dad because of your actions. It’s a privilege. Anyone who murders a child is no longer a dad in my book.”
At least once during the alleged abuse, the mother took Cash to the hospital, but doctors missed injuries, including rib fractures, that would have revealed signs of abuse earlier, Hatami said.
Richmond never independently took Cash to receive medical help, he said.
Hawkins reiterated to the jury that family members have said that when Richmond gets upset, he separates himself from the conflict, which explained his demeanor while paramedics worked on his son.
He again said everyone was quick to label Richmond as guilty and that the trial was the first time Richmond had been afforded the presumption of innocence.
“Bias penetrates this case and because bias has penetrated, we have a lot of unanswered questions,” Hawkins said. “Every time we receive information from Chris, it’s consistent and that consistency should matter.”
