Lake County Indiana Sheriff John Buncich and Bernard Eriks, grandfather of 13-year-old murder victim Christian Choate, talk about the sentencing of Riley Choate for the murder.
A Gary, Ind. man charged with keeping his 13-year-old son in a dog cage, then beating the boy to death and burying the body in a shallow grave near the family’s home in a trailer park was sentenced this morning to 80 years in prison.
Riley Choate, 40, entered a plea deal with Lake County, Ind., prosecutors this month with an agreed sentence that spares him some 40 years off the 120-year sentence he faced on charges tied to years of brutal abuse of his son, Christian, that led to the boy’s death in 2009.
The boy, who weighed less than 50 pounds when he died, had lived the last two years of his life confined to a 3-foot high dog cage, and was beaten regularly by his father.
“I can’t conceive of any set of facts charging neglect that could be any worse,” prosecutor Michael Woods said in court in Crown Point this morning.
Lake County Superior Court Judge Diane Boswell said there was plenty of blame to go around and several people had failed Christian.
“The pain and the suffering, the degradation this baby went through for two years of his life is incomprehensible,” Boswell said. “I can’t imagine any circumstance when a parent would allow this.”
Choate addressed the judge briefly before the sentencing. “All my actions will haunt me forever. I loved my son,” he said.
Christian’s body was discovered by police investigators in 2011, after his older sister told relatives the boy had died two years earlier after Choate punched him repeatedly.
Choate and his wife, Kimberly Kubina, loaded the boy’s body into a tote, then buried him under concrete beneath a shed with a Bible laid across his chest. They told the other children — and, initially, police investigators -- that Christian had run away. The family moved to Kentucky not long after Christian died.
The sister, one of as many as 10 children living with Choate and his wife and co-defendant, Kimberly Kubina, in a single-wide trailer on the west side of Gary, had been removed from school in the Gary suburb of Merrillville in 2007 to be homeschooled. Kubina later admitted the children were pulled out of school because Choate’s abuse of the boy was escalating and Christian often was badly bruised.
The girl was charged with taking care of her brother, whom Choate and Kubina said had to be confined after he was caught “molesting” his younger step brother.
Christian initially was confined to a bedroom, then a bathroom, then was tied to a bed frame. After he managed to escape, he was locked in a dog cage they purchased from a neighbor. The boy was fed noodles twice a day, and given leftovers from dinner. The girl admitted she also beat and choked her brother regularly, and that she endured beatings at Choate’s hands as well.
Child welfare officials were infrequent visitors to the family’s trailer park, and had investigated abuse allegations against Choate involving children other than Christian. A neighbor said she twice called police, and in turn the Indiana Department of Child and Family Services, with concerns, but never saw an investigator enter the family’s trailer.
On April, 4, 2009, Christian’s sister told police the boy refused to eat, and an enraged Choate punched Christian “full force” several times in the head and threw him back into his cage, court records state. Christian died the following day. The Lake County coroner’s office listed the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head, and a skull fracture.
Kubina, who divorced Choate from jail in 2011, entered a plea deal with prosecutors and agreed to cooperate in Choate’s prosecution. She is set to be sentenced in February on child neglect charges. She has told prosecutors she sometimes stopped Choate from beating Christian but never went to authorities to report the abuse because she feared losing custody of other children in the home.
Choate himself won custody of Christian and his sister in 2004. The children’s biological mother said she hadn’t seen the children since 2004.
Dennis Sullivan is a freelance reporter. Andy Grimm is a Tribune reporter.
agrimm@tribune.com
Gary man sentenced to 80 years in abuse, death of son
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Gary man sentenced to 80 years in abuse, death of son
