Editor’s note: The following article contains graphic desciptions of abuse, violence and the injuries resulting from them which many readers are likely to find disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.

A former Tyrone Township woman will stand trial on charges in connection to the savage beating death of her 4-year-old son, Dominick Calhoun, a judge ruled Monday.

After emotional testimony from a police detective and the medical examiner, as well as admissions from witnesses who said they failed to act, Judge John Conover of the 67th District Court in Flint ordered Corrine Baker to stand trial on charges of second-degree murder and second-degree child abuse in connection to her son’s beating death.



“If you can’t depend on your mother, I don’t know who you can depend on,” Conover said. “This was a slow, lingering torturous death over a period of days.”

Police allege Corrine Baker, 25, did not do enough to defend her son from her boyfriend, Brandon Joshua-Frederick Hayes, who is accused of murdering the child.

They allege he began beating the boy April 9 after he wet himself in the morning and the assault did not stop until April 11, when Corrine Baker’s 16-year-old sister came to the apartment, saw the boy’s condition and called the child’s paternal grandfather, who called police.

Argentine Township Police Department Detective Angelos Paneos, who responded to the grandfather’s call for help, testified that he found a “young boy lying on his back” in a bedroom with a woman, later identified as Corrine Baker, sitting next to him.

Paneos said Corrine Baker “was not hysterical” and that she spoke to him in a monotone voice.

“She was consoling him, comforting the boy,” Paneos said. “… She was petting him, rubbing him. She wasn’t hysterical. She was just sitting there.”

At one point, Paneos asked Corrine Baker what happened, and she replied, “Brandon has beat us.” He told her that the injuries could not have happened in one day. He said the injuries on the boy’s hands and fingers had “crusted over.” She kept repeating that “Brandon did this.”

Paneos said she pulled the boy’s pants down and told the detective to look. The boy’s genitals were beaten so badly it shocked the police and physicians who saw it, including Paneos, who said the boy’s condition was “devastatingly shocking.”

“I said, ‘What the (expletive) kind of animals are you?’ I said, ‘Look at this boy. He’s crucified,’ ” Paneos testified as he wiped tears from his cheeks.

Paneos apologized to the court as he left the stand for his unprofessional behavior toward Corrine Baker that day.

Other testimony showed that no one — not Corrine Baker, not Brandon Hayes, nor their friends, family and acquaintances — who knew or suspected something was wrong did anything to help Dominick.

Corrine Baker’s mother, Julie Baker, testified that Corrine Baker seemed “happy” when she and her husband picked up their daughter at about 9 a.m. April 9 to take her to a doctor’s appointment, but she did not go into the apartment and did not see Dominick. She said they dropped off Corrine Baker at 3:30 p.m.

Corrine Baker’s other son, Tyler Baker, 8, testified at an earlier hearing for Brandon Hayes that his mother was at the doctor’s appointment when Hayes stuck Dominick’s hand under the “hottest water” in the house and burned the boy.

On cross-examination, Julie Baker admitted that she was aware of her daughter’s troubled past, including her addiction to drugs, which led to a long-term program of substance-abuse treatment at the age of 13.

Brandon Hayes’ father, Arnold Hayes, testified that he saw Dominick’s burned hand when he took his son, Corrine Baker and the boys to the Dollar General store and Walmart on April 11, and while he encouraged the woman to seek treatment for her son, he also admitted that he did nothing more to help the boy.

“No, I did not take any affirmative action,” Arnold Hayes admitted on cross-examination.

At 9:30 p.m. April 11, Arnold Hayes called Julie Baker and told her about Dominick’s burned hand. Julie Baker said she was half asleep and she decided to call her daughter the next day. She said she left messages encouraging Corrine Baker to seek help for her son, but she, too, admitted that she did not seek treatment for her grandson.

Brandon DeLong and Michael DeLong, brothers and neighbors who live within 50 yards to 100 yards of Brandon Hayes and Corrine Baker’s apartment in Argentine Township, both said they saw Brandon Hayes walking toward a local gas station April 10. They both said Corrine Baker knew them from when she dated Dominick’s father, who is their stepbrother, but the woman did not approach either man about trouble at the apartment.

Neither of the brothers saw Dominick that weekend.

Corrine Baker’s sister, Christine Baker, testified that she went to her sister’s apartment April 11 with three friends, two of whom wanted to buy marijuana from Brandon Hayes.

The 16-year-old girl said she was told not to disturb Dominick because he was sleeping, but when she looked in on him at Brandon Hayes’ suggestion, she saw Dominick’s battered face.

“Did Corrine ask you for help?” Assistant Prosecutor Tammy Phillips asked.

“No,” Christine Baker replied.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Erwin Meiers III asked Christine Baker if she called police and she said no. When asked why, she replied, “I don’t know.”  

Instead, the girl called Dominick’s paternal grandfather, Rick Calhoun, who did not testify Monday.

Taylor Hodge and Cassandra Miller, two of the three teens accompanying Christine Baker to the apartment, both testified that they saw bruises on Corrine Baker’s face, but the woman not once sought their help for herself or her son.

When asked why she didn’t call police, Hodge replied: “Corrine told me not to.”

Neighbor Buddy Everad said he heard verbal abuse the weekend of April 9 coming from the Brandon Hayes-Corrine Baker apartment and banging noises. He thought the couple, who had recently moved in, was hanging pictures. He said he also heard the “little boy” cry out, “Mommy, stop him.”

“I said the baby needs medical attention, both said they couldn’t do it because they had warrants and didn’t want (Child Protective Services) to get involved,” Keen said, later noting, “It hurt me to see how his hand was burned.”

When he was asked if he helped Dominick, he replied: “I did not do anything, correct.”

Police were summoned to the apartment when Rick Calhoun went to the apartment after receiving a call from Christine Baker. By then it was too late to help Dominick, whose brain was so swollen that doctors had to remove part of the skull to try to alleviate pressure.

Dr. Brian Hunter, Genesee County medical examiner, testified that Dominick was beaten from head to toe and that his teeth had been broken, which caused blood to get into his intestines. He said the boy also had thermal burns on his body with the most severe burns — described as “blackened and charred” — on his left hand.

After the daylong testimony, Phillips asked the judge to bind the case over to Circuit Court.

She told Conover that Corrine Baker chose on multiple occasions not to seek help for her son, even when Brandon Hayes left her alone in the apartment with the boy.

“She was free of the watchful eyes of Mr. (Brandon) Hayes and could have asked for help,” Phillips said. “That alone is so singularly telling in this weekend of terror that Dominick must have experienced. … Clearly, it is reckless to refuse to notify authorities out of mere self-interest.”

Meiers, Corrine Baker’s attorney, said in order to bind the case over, his client’s conduct and manner of act had to be so egregious that the direct result is death. He said that blame was not his client’s but rather belonged to Christine Baker, Miller, Hodge, Keen and the others who saw Dominick’s injuries but did not call police or seek help for the boy.

“Each and every one of them seemed to have at least a civic duty to do something and did they or did they not,” he said. “Ms. (Corrine) Baker was under a certain spell or a certain force that Brandon Hayes was able to have over her; that she was unable to perform or act or react in any specific way that would have allowed her to contact the police or any other agency.”

Brandon Hayes’ uncle, Rodney Keen, also testified that he saw the burns on Dominick’s hand and the boy told him it didn’t hurt. He said even though the boy’s hand was “as big as mine,” he gave his nephew and Corrine Baker “the benefit of the doubt.”

The judge, Conover, agreed, laying blame also on Livingston County authorities whom he said failed to be aware that Corrine Baker was living with a felon out of her probation district.

Conover also blamed Judge Carol Hackett Garagiola, who denied Julie Baker’s and her husband’s request to get custody of Dominick and his older half brother in October 2008 due to their daughter’s drug use.

“A series of bad decisions caused this little boy to slip through the cracks,” Conover said. “There is overwhelming evidence this defendant … failed to act.”

Meanwhile, Brandon Hayes was arraigned Monday in Genesee County Circuit Court on seven felony charges, including murder, torture and child abuse, in connection to Dominick’s death. He faces three drug-related charges for allegedly selling marijuana.

Corrine Baker and her two sons had lived in the Tyrone Woods manufactured-home community in Tyrone Township until about two weeks to three weeks before Dominick’s murder.

Reading teen drug abuse articles in magazines or on the Internet can help you understand how drug addiction affects teenagers in a number of ways.

Contact Daily Press & Argus reporter Lisa Roose-Church at (517) 552-2846 or lrchurch@gannett.com

http://www.livingstondaily.com/article/20100720/NEWS01/100720005/Beaten-tot-s-mom-faces-murder-trial

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