A man convicted by a jury last week of fatally beating his girlfriend’s 3-year-old son will spend the rest of his days in state prison under the sentence a Lucas County judge handed down Wednesday.
The life sentence without possibility of parole that Judge Linda Jennings gave Michael Kitto, 33, of Saline, Mich., echoed the request of Kelley McEwen, who addressed the Lucas County Common Pleas courtroom about the October, 2022, death of Declan Hill.
“I have a life sentence without parole, and I hope Michael Kitto gets the same,” Ms. McEwen said after tearfully giving herself some of the blame for the boy’s death by having allowed Kitto into her Sylvania Township home.
Evidence made it clear, Judge Jennings said, that Declan’s death was from severe, abusive blunt-force trauma.
“What kind of depraved individual would inflict this type of injury on an innocent, helpless 3-year-old child?” she asked rhetorically before pronouncing the sentence. “The heinous nature of this offense is incomprehensible.”
After a four-day trial, the jury took less than two hours last Friday to find Kitto guilty of all charges, including aggravated murder, murder, felonious assault, and child endangerment.
The only uncertainty about the sentencing Wednesday was whether Judge Jennings would give Kitto parole eligibility, as the life sentence for aggravated murder is specified by Ohio law.
Judge Jennings also sentenced Kitto to eight to 12 years for child endangering, but made that time concurrent with the life sentence.
Defense lawyer Kurt Bruderly told the court Kitto’s prior robbery conviction in Michigan was a product of a painkiller addiction Kitto developed after being prescribed oxycodone after dental surgery. He said Kitto had lived a clean life after serving three years in prison, and he was “salvageable” if given the prospect of eventual parole.
Michael Loisel, chief of special prosecutions for the Lucas County Prosecutor’s Office, countered that a recent disturbance at Ms. McEwen’s home in the 3400 block of King Road, where Kitto had moved in the previous spring, and a recent impaired-driving offense both betrayed his ongoing instability.
The prosecutor noted the medical experts’ use of “unsalvageable” to describe Declan’s condition once paramedics arrived, and that “was because of what this man did to him.”
“All he had to do was walk away…. He has been out of control for the vast majority of his adult life,” Mr. Loisel said.
Kitto gave no statement during the hearing. Mr. Bruderly said he had advised his client to remain silent because of the defense’s intent to appeal the jury verdict.
“This sentence doesn’t come as a surprise, given the nature of the testimony,” Mr. Bruderly said outside the courtroom afterward.
Kitto was alone with Ms. McEwen’s youngest child on the morning of Oct. 6, 2022, her second day at a new job, when he called 911 to report the boy was unconscious.
He told the call taker and responders the boy had run into a door while playing and then fell backward and hit his head.
Rescue personnel who had been training nearby arrived just a minute or two later and found Declan with no pulse or breathing. After an extended resuscitation effort documented by police body camera video, he was taken to a nearby emergency room and then to Mercy Health St. Vincent Medical Center, where he died the next day after a ventilator was removed.
The recordings showed police and paramedics were quickly skeptical of Kitto’s explanation for the boy’s injury because of its severity. Dr. Thomas Blomquist, now the Lucas County coroner and then a deputy coroner, ruled the death a homicide and testified that the head and neck injuries he found during the autopsy were too great to be explained by a fall.
“My son was innocent. He didn’t deserve the anger and rage that ended his life that day,” Ms. McEwen said Wednesday before remarking that the murder investigation even deprived her of the chance to donate Declan’s vital organs to potentially save other, ill children.
Mr. Loisel said after the hearing that life without parole is intended for the worst crimes by the worst defendants, and this case fit that definition.
“No other sanction was appropriate for the crime this person committed,” the prosecutor said.
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