Prosecutors: Dad killed boy kept in dog cage
But they buried him with a bible… and quicklime to dissolve the evidence of abuse.
The girl told police that her father and stepmother regularly beat the boy and that Riley Choate kept him in the front bedroom of their trailer home in a folding dog cage secured with seven padlocks. She said that Riley Choate beat Christian severely in the head after he refused to eat on April 4, 2009.
An autopsy found the boy had sustained blunt force trauma to the body, internal bleeding and a skull fracture, court documents said. The boy’s death was classified as a homicide with blunt force trauma.
The next day, when the girl — who was assigned to look after the boy and assist in his punishment — checked on him after he initially refused to eat again, she found him unresponsive.
“I put my finger underneath his nose and he was not breathing,” Christina Choate said in an interview with The Times of Munster.