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Ex-aide testifies in trial of boy's
death
October 4, 2007
By Robert Gavin
ALBANY - An ex-state health aide
who drove the van the night 13-year-old Jonathan Carey died in their
care testified today that his co-worker repeatedly told him to keep
driving - well after the child stopped breathing - and feared the
worst.
"It was a total shock for me -
everything changed," Nadeem Mall, 33, told jurors from the witness
stand in Albany County Court. "I sat there for a few minutes.
Basically, I asked him, 'What happened?'"
Mall, who pleaded guilty to
criminally negligent homicide in July under an agreement with
prosecutors, is serving a six-month term in the Albany County jail.
He wore orange jail smocks as he
testified against Edwin Tirado, 36, who faces five to 15 years
behind bars if convicted of manslaughter and criminally negligent
homicide.
On Feb. 15, after the autistic boy
fell unconscious and they drove around to cover their tracks, the
pair returned to the O.D. Heck Developmental Center in Niskayuna, he
said.
Tirado told him, "I think I killed
him," as they pulled up, he testified.
The men had allegedly driven around
for 90 minutes, stopping for errands, as Jonathan Carey lay inside
the van that left the O.D. Heck Developmental Center on a trip for
Crossgates Mall. They never got there.
Mall testified that Tirado asked
him to drive. He realized he needed cash on the way to Crossgates
and they stopped, double-parked, outside the Hannaford supermarket
on Wolf Road, he said.
Mall said he arrived too late to
address his bank transaction issue. But upon returning, he witnessed
Tirado sitting side-by-side with Carey and holding the boy. He asked
if everything was all right, he testified.
As the van took off back to O.D.
Heck, Mall testified hearing kicking and shuffling. He said Tirado
said he was thirsty and they stopped at a Hess gas station. A
16-year-old youth was inside the vehicle.
After they left the Hess station,
Tirado told him the boy had stopped breathing. That's when he froze,
Mall told jurors.
"I had a million things in my
mind," Mall testified. "I was thinking, 'Why is this happening to
me? What did I do wrong?"
Instead of going to O.D. Heck, he
said, Tirado asked him to go to a video store at Mohawk Commons
shopping center. Then they went to Tirado's house to drop it off,
said Mall, who noted he smoked a cigarette and chatted with a
neighbor.
"I asked him again, 'What do you
wanna do? He said, 'No, 'we still have time' and (we) started to go
to his house," he testified. "Basically, I asked him, What are we
gonna do? He said, 'When we get back to O.D. Heck, we'll just say he
stopped breathing, we just found that out.'"
The boy later died at St. Clare's
Hospital in Schenectady.
Earlier Thursday, jurors watched a
police officer perform a mock restraint hold on a prosecutor.
"Would you be able to demonstrate
on me what the defendant demonstrated on you that night?" Assistant
District Attorney David Rossi asked Niskayuna Police Officer Michael
Stevens.
Over the objections of Tirado's
defense attorney, the officer knelt down and squeezed Rossi with
both arms, as jurors looked on.
After Niskayuna Police arrived,
Stevens testified, he interviewed Tirado, eventually asking to
perform the restraint hold on him. Rossi on Wednesday had said
Tirado "squeezed the life" out of the boy, as a 16-year-old youth
was also in the car. Tirado's lawyer, Brian Donohue, argued against
the demonstration, but was overruled by acting Supreme Court Justice
Dan Lamont.
An O.D. Heck staffer later
performed a second mock restraint on Rossi.
Prosecutors allege Tirado not only
wrongly restrained the boy, they say the correct maneuver should
never be done in a van.
Donohue has suggested the boy's
death could have been caused by a seizure. Earlier today, he asked
an emergency room doctor at St. Clare's if she could rule out a
seizure.
The doctor, Hedva Shamir, said she
understood the boy did not have a seizure disorder, but didn't
absolutely discount the possibility. The cause of death was
determined by a medical examiner.
The child's mother, Lisa Carey,
said the boy had no history of seizures.
Gavin can be reached 434-2403 or by
e-mail at
rgavin@timesunion.com.
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