Jury convicts baby sitter in death of toddler at Wentzville day care

ST. CHARLES COUNTY • A jury on Thursday night found a former Wentzville day care provider guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 death of an 18-month-old boy under her care.

The verdict was announced after about six hours of deliberations. The jurors will reconvene Friday morning to consider a sentence.

Prosecutors alleged that Lisa West, now 42, caused the head injury suffered by the child, Mason Beach, just minutes after his mother left him at West’s home day care. West has said Mason fell down carpeted stairs.

“It was a blow to the head that caused this trauma,” Philip Groenweghe, an assistant county prosecutor, told jurors in closing arguments. “The Beaches ask for only one thing. What they want is truth, what they want is accountability.”

West’s attorney, Richard Sindel, said it’s inconceivable to people who know West as a caring, peaceful person that she could have harmed the child whom she had baby-sat for 15 months.

“If Lisa was about to turn from who she is into the Incredible Hulk, not a single human being who came into the courtroom” to support her during the trial would think it “remotely possible,” he said.

Sindel also said West called Mason’s mother to report the injury just a few minutes after the boy had been dropped off at West’s home. That wasn’t enough time to “blow up” in anger, he said.

The cause of death was listed as blunt force trauma, but West wasn’t charged with a crime at the time. In 2013, county prosecutors reopened the case and a grand jury in 2014 indicted West, who now lives in Plano, Ill., on a felony child abuse charge. That was changed last month to first-degree involuntary manslaughter.

Prosecutors on Thursday repeated that an autopsy carried out by the office of the county medical examiner, Dr. Mary Case, concluded that the boy’s head injuries — including retinal hemorrhaging — were caused by striking.

Sindel cited what he said were inconsistencies in testimony by Case and others called by prosecutors in the trial, which began last week.

Groenweghe said a pediatric physician and child abuse forensics expert at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center, Dr. Ann DiMaio, concluded initially that Mason’s injury was due to having been shaken.

However, he said that opinion was issued before the autopsy. He said what happened to the boy’s brain was the same, whether caused by shaking or punching, and “a fall down the stairs doesn’t come close.”

In 2012, Mason’s family won a $707,000 civil suit against West after a jury decided West was negligent in caring for Mason. Rebecca Beach, Mason’s mother, said the family was unable to collect the money.

The involuntary manslaughter charge alleged that West “recklessly caused” the boy’s death by striking his head, striking his head against an object, shaking him or “a combination thereof.”

Circuit Judge Rick Zerr told jurors they also had the option of finding West guilty of the lesser crime of second-degree involuntary manslaughter if they determined her to be criminally negligent by failing to be aware of a substantial risk. They opted for the harsher one.

Reached after the verdict was announced, Rebecca Beach said the outcome was what Mason’s family had hoped for.

“We’re just, we’re glad that she’s finally being held accountable for what she did,” Beach said. “It’s definitely been a long time coming and way overdue.”

Mason was one of the subjects of a 2011-12 Post-Dispatch investigation of unlicensed home day cares in Missouri.

Dozens of child deaths from 2007 to 2011 were in unlicensed home day cares where caregivers were not required to have training, insurance or adhere to safety standards.

Mark Schlinkmann • 636-255-7233

@mschlinkmann on Twitter

mschlinkmann@post-dispatch.com

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