Dylan Mitchell was an infant when he suffered the abuse that stole his future, 18 years before it ended his life.
Like his twin brother, Dylan Mitchell was a happy and alert baby, small as a skein of yarn at birth, but healthy despite being born five weeks premature to Erin LaForest and Kevin Mitchell of Colorado Springs, in August 2005.
Dylan lost all the early ground he’d gained, and everything that lay ahead, the night before Thanksgiving that same year.
Police say 35-year-old Kevin Mitchell was home alone watching the kids when he picked up 3-month-old Dylan and violently shook him, rupturing veins inside the infant’s head and starting a fatal countdown — a death by degrees — as Dylan’s brain began to bleed and swell.
Over the following hours, Dylan grew increasingly inconsolable, screaming, writhing and punching his fists in the air, “very similar to the physical actions of a seizure” — or the immediate after-effects of shaken baby syndrome — according to the El Paso County arrest warrant later issued for Kevin Christopher Mitchell.
By the time Dylan was seen by doctors on Thanksgiving Day, he was barely conscious. He was immediately admitted to the intensive-care unit at UCHealth Memorial Hospital and put on life support.
“When Erin called me from the hospital and said the doctors suspected that Dylan had been physically abused, I don't think I could breathe,” said Dylan’s maternal grandmother, Rosa Baxendale. “Up to that point, as far as we knew, everything was OK. Life was as normal as normal can be.”
It would never be “normal” again.
An estimated 25% of babies who suffer violent shaking at the hands of caregivers don’t survive their injuries, according to the Utah-based National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome.
Doctors initially thought Dylan would be among that number, that he wouldn’t continue to breathe on his own after he was weaned off life support in January.
But he did survive, for 18 years, unable to speak, walk, see or feed himself, but far from the “little lump on the couch” Rosa and Todd Baxendale said doctors had prepared them for.
Dylan Mitchell died in his sleep on Oct. 3, 2023.
An autopsy by the El Paso County Coroner’s Office, completed in July, ruled the 18-year-old’s death a homicide, the delayed, fatal outcome of the injuries inflicted when he was an infant.
“It is my opinion that Dylan Mitchell … died as a result of complications of remote pediatric abusive head trauma,” according to the autopsy report, which referenced the 2006 case against Kevin Mitchell. “The overall findings and circumstances are consistent with death due to complications stemming from remote injuries sustained as a result of the harmful, volitional actions of another individual(s).”
Kevin Mitchell pleaded guilty in 2009 to multiple charges of child abuse negligently causing severe bodily injury. He was sentenced to two years of work release and 10 years probation, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections. Records show he successfully petitioned the court to end his probation in 2021.
The Baxendales said they hope the district attorney decides to seek an indictment in Dylan’s death, bringing long-delayed justice for their grandson, and a sense of closure to their grief — and anger.
“This sweet boy who didn’t get a chance to have a life because of … a few seconds of violence, because someone snapped,” Todd Baxendale said. “It took 18 years, but there is no statute of limitations for murder.”
Delayed shaking death sentences
The prosecution of such child abuse cases, a homicidal act committed years, sometimes decades before death occurs — and a suspect/defendant who pleaded guilty to a lesser crime, and served out that sentence — is not unprecedented in the history of U.S. jurisprudence.
A former babysitter in Florida recently pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 2019 death of Benjamin Dowling, a man she was accused of severely disabling in 1984. Terry McKirchy — at the time of the crime, pregnant with her third child — pleaded no contest to attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery on a child, and served what amounted to the suggestion of a sentence: weekends in jail until she gave birth, then three years of probation.
When Dowling died in 2021, at age 35, a medical examiner’s report tying his death to the injuries McKirchy caused in 1984 led prosecutors to seek first-degree murder charges. McKirchy was sentenced in late August to three years in prison on her new manslaughter plea and 10 years felony probation.
In an earlier Florida case, Christopher Wells, a father sentenced to jail in 1989 for child abuse, was charged with second-degree murder almost two decades after he served less than a year in prison for inflicting the brain injury that eventually would kill his daughter, in 2006. Wells pleaded no contest to the charges and received a 15-year prison sentence.
But the applicable laws and statutes that allowed for such indictments in Florida vary from state to state.
'Even just a few seconds'
The No. 1 reason caregivers cite for the breakdown that led to them to shake a defenseless child, is frustration — at the child, for crying; at themselves, for not being able to stop the tears, according to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome.
More than 1,200 cases of shaken baby syndrome are documented annually, at hospitals nationwide, but professionals who treat the victims and work with at-risk families say the number of cases is likely much higher.
“If a parent does … shake their baby, a lot of them do not report it, out of fear of retaliation, fear of losing their child, of legal involvement, guilt, all sorts of reasons,” said Dr. Amy Rickman, director of the High-Risk Pediatric Home Visit Program, a four-year-old program created in partnership with the El Paso County Department of Human Services to respond to cases of suspected abuse, and offer support for families.
“Sometimes it’s not reported, and the baby may at the time seem to be OK,” she said. “Later on, some of those things become apparent.”
To understand how destructive shaking can be to an infant, one first must understand the odd imbalance of their anatomy.
Babies’ heads are proportionally large and heavy compared to their bodies, and for at least the first few months are controlled by neck muscles too weak to do more than the most basic of jobs, of keeping the head attached.
“I’m sure everyone has picked up a baby and had their head fall back and worried if they hurt them,” Rickman said.
A head lolling back before you can cradle it is not abusive head trauma, she stressed.
This is:
“A prolonged episode, of even just a few seconds, of that baby’s head whipping back and forth, and their brain jostling inside their skull and … essentially, shearing those blood vessels,” Rickman said. “How much damage depends on the child, on the force.”
And on how soon the child receives treatment after the injuries occurred.
“The blood and fluid build up and put pressure on the brain, and with that they just cannot get enough oxygen. You can get brain damage pretty quickly,” Rickman said. “Time is of the essence, and I think that is where a lot of times greater complications — blindness, deafness, paralysis and even death — come into play.”
Recognizing, much less documenting and prosecuting, a crime that often doesn’t present itself in obvious ways can be a challenge for those seeking justice for victims, legal experts say.
Former prosecutor and criminal defense attorney Karen Steinhauser remembers the fight in Colorado, in the early 2000s, to allow expert medical witnesses to use analogies during courtroom testimony to explain the severity of injuries, absent an obviously battered body.
“I think when we talk about child abuse resulting in death, people are used to seeing, for example, bruises. The types of injuries that can be seen with shaken baby syndrome, people don't see that, so it makes it harder for experts to be able to describe these injuries in terms of what it does to a child's brain," said Steinhauser, now a professor at the University of Denver.
Since 2003, expert medical witnesses in Colorado can liken the effects of such unseen child abuse damage to trauma that’s easier to imagine: being involved in a high-speed car crash, or plummeting from a multistory building.
Rickman said when exhaustion and stress levels are piqued, having a strong support network — and a history of positive role models — can make all the difference. But not every family is so lucky. That’s the gap the home visit program seeks to bridge.
“It’s about knowing the choices, what to do when a baby cries … or a parent or caregiver feels like they’re on the edge. Whatever it takes, to keep that baby safe,” Rickman said.
'Dylan was a survivor'
Court records show that in the hours after Dylan Mitchell suffered the trauma that would ultimately lead to his death, Kevin Mitchell repeatedly suggested they take the baby to the hospital.
Dylan’s mother, who police records show had been at work when the abuse occurred (and ultimately was cleared of charges in the case), said she thought her son had gas pains. But as Thanksgiving morning wore on, and Dylan refused to eat, stopped “crying so hard he couldn’t breathe,” and was drifting in and out of consciousness, they headed to the emergency room.
Rosa Baxendale remembers doctors showing her a screen with a scan of Dylan’s brain activity, in the days after he was intubated and admitted to the ICU. Lighter areas, they explained, represented regions of his brain that were still active.
“It was just dark … dark everywhere,” she said. “And his left eye was swollen and so full of blood, you couldn’t see the pupil.”
Todd and Rosa Baxendale were the temporary guardians for Dylan, his twin brother, and their older brother, for several years, until initial charges against their mother were dropped, and she was able to clear DHS hurdles to regain custody. When she did, the Baxendales set her and the children up in a house a few miles from their own in Broomfield.
“If Dylan and his brothers weren’t at our house, we were there. And when Dylan was with us, he was never alone … he was always right there, the center of activity, part of whatever it was we were doing,” Rosa Baxendale said.
She and Todd were the ones driving the kids back and forth to the Springs, for mandated, supervised visits with their father.
Kevin Mitchell declined to comment for this story through his attorney, Mark Hanchey, but Mitchell's online bios describe him as a poet, activist and community organizer in Colorado Springs. The Gazette was unable to reach Erin LaForest, who was the primary caregiver for Dylan at the time of his death.
Todd Baxendale said he believes Kevin Mitchell never accepted responsibility for the injuries to Dylan, and as soon as he could, "moved on with his life."
“From the day he was born, Dylan was a survivor,” said the devoted grandpa and trained mechanical engineer, who created adaptive toys he could tell brought Dylan moments of joy. “They told us he was going to be in a vegetative state, that he'd never recognize anyone. Everything they told us he wouldn’t achieve, he did and surpassed.”
Dylan couldn’t speak or see, and had no control of his arms or legs, but he brightened up — made his “little happy noises” — when someone he loved came in the room.
“He could always tell when Todd got home, and he’d make his noises, and just smile that big beautiful smile,” Rosa said.
Todd taught him how to blow a raspberry, a skill Dylan exercised with gleeful abandon.
“He was in diapers up until the day he passed, and on so many medications, but he was in there,” Rosa said. “He was there, and he loved, and we loved him … everybody loved Dylan."
End of the story?
There may be no statute of limitations on murder or attempted murder in Colorado, but the wheels of justice rarely run smooth.
Colorado's 4th Judicial District Attorney's Office said Thursday that it is aware of the homicide ruling in Dylan Mitchell's death, and is "currently reviewing the circumstances and applicable laws to determine appropriate next steps."
Todd Baxendale said he was trying not to get his hopes up about a possible resolution to a heartbreaking story that —no matter how it turns out — radiates tragedy.
“I hope he gets charged and arrested and prosecuted and serves time for it, but there’s not a side to this that isn’t bad,” Baxendale said. “I understand he’s got a little girl now, a new family, and they’re going to suffer, too. But Dylan needs justice. People can’t do that to another human being, and not have to face consequences.”
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