DSLC NEWS PHOTO: Riley Lowell Choate (left), 39, and Kimberly Leona Kubina (center), are accused of keeping Christian Choate (right) in a dog cage with seven locks for more than a year before he died in April of 2009. His body was unearthered from a shallow grave in Gary last week.Murder charges have been filed against the father and stepmother of a 13-year-old boy who died two years ago but whose body was unearthered from a shallow grave in Gary just last week.
Riley Lowell Choate, 39, and Kimberly Leona Kubina are accused of keeping Christian Choate in a dog cage with seven locks for more than a year before he died in April of 2009. They are both charged with murder, battery, neglect and criminal confinement.
An affidavit filed with the charges details how the boy was regularly abused and how the couple forced his older sister, 15 at the time, to feed him, take him to the bathroom and see that he did exercises.
In at least one instance, Christian was taken out of his cage and the sister was forced to chain his hands and feet to a bedframe "while striking him and choking him once until he turned blue," the office said in the affidavit. The sister videotaped the episode at Kubina's direction, but authorities said Kubina later recorded over it.
On April 4, 2009, the day before the boy's death, Christian would not eat and Choate "became enraged and punched him with full force several times in the front, side and back of his head before throwing him back in the cage," according to the affidavit.
Christian's sister was told to check on the boy every five minutes afterwards "or (Choate) would do the same thing to her," the office said.
The next day, the sister noticed Christian was not breathing and tried to revive him with a mattress pump, the office said.
The girl then watched her father and stepmother wrap Christian in two plastic bags, place his body in a plastic tote and load him in the back of a van and drive off, court records show. Later, the girl’s stepmother said they buried Christian and covered him in concrete so he couldn’t get out, the girl told detectives.
And there Christian’s body lay, wrapped in a blanket with a Bible on his chest, for two years, the Lake County Sheriff said.
An autopsy showed the boy had suffered “blunt force trauma to his body with internal bleeding and a skull fracture,” according to court records. He had been missing, unnoticed, for two years, authorities said.
Lake County sheriff’s police began investigating the boy's death last week after receiving a tip from the boy’s estranged biological mother.
According to records, the sheriff’s office received a call from Christian’s mother, saying her 17-year-old daughter in Kentucky relayed some concerning information about her son. Detectives called the girl in Kentucky and interviewed her by phone.
According to police, Christian’s mother relinquished custody of the boy and his sister to their biological father in July 2005.
Christian's older sister told authorities that she believed the boy was kept in the cage so he wouldn't run away and tell his biological mom about the abuse.