Christopher Gregor left 6-year-old son Corey Micciolo in his dying moments: nurse
TOMS RIVER - After his 6-year-old son's heart stopped for a second time while at Southern Ocean County Medical Center, Christopher Gregor exited the room where his child was being treated, leaving the boy to spend his final minutes with strangers who were trying to save his life, a nurse testified today.
Christopher Gregor had been in and out of the treatment room on April 2, 2021, as medical personnel were working on his son, Corey Micciolo, emergency room nurse Lindsay Carnevale testified at Gregor's trial in his son's murder.
Gregor left the room again just after 4:51 p.m., never to return, she said.
"Who stayed with Corey?'' Christine Lento, an assistant Ocean County prosecutor, asked the witness.
"We did,'' Carnevale said, referring to the medical staff. "We were the only ones with him.''
The child was not pronounced dead until 5:02 p.m., Carnevale said.
Gregor was seen walking out of the medical center to his car and driving away at 5:20 p.m., according to hospital surveillance video played for the jury during later testimony of Sgt. Raymond Coles of the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office.
Gregor, 31, of Barnegat, is on trial before Superior Court Judge Guy P. Ryan, charged with murder and endangering the welfare of a child.
Within minutes of Corey's death, the child's mother called Gregor three times, but he did not answer the phone calls, Coles testified.
Shortly afterward, Gregor rejected a call placed to him by a sergeant with the Stafford Township police department and minutes later did not answer a second call from the same sergeant, Coles said.
At 6:10 p.m. that day, Gregor conducted searches on the internet on the questions, "Can your phone be traced in airplane mode?'' and "Can my car be tracked?'' Coles told the jury.
The following day, Coles said, Gregor searched on the internet for answers to what causes a rise in blood sugar in white blood cells, could internal bleeding raise your blood sugar level, how does gastrointestinal bleeding happen and can a GI bleed be slow?
The prosecution has argued that Corey died as a result of blunt-force trauma, while the defense claims the child died from sepsis.
On April 4,2021, Gregor sought answers on the internet to another question: "There was a murder determination from an autopsy - how long to file charges?'' Coles testified.
Coles, who works in the prosecutor’s digital forensic laboratory, extracted that information and more from Gregor's cellular telephone.
From the extraction, It appeared that Gregor had deleted some 3,466 text messages between him and Corey's mother, Breanna Micciolo,, Coles testified.
The cellular phone extraction revealed text messages Gregor sent to a woman he had met on a dating app, complaining to her on the night of April 1, 2021, that Corey's mother didn't return the child to him when she was supposed to that night and that she finally brought him back the morning of April 2, 2021, Coles testified.
Gregor sent the same woman, named Marcie, a series of text messages that afternoon making arrangements for a date with her that night. Gregor texted the woman again at 4:44 p.m. the same day to inform her he was at the hospital with his son and would let her know what was happening, Coles testified.
The extraction of the defendant's cellular phone showed it pinged at 60,000 GPS locations from New Jersey to the southwestern corner of Arkansas from the evening of April 2, 2020, to sometime after April 3, 2021, Coles said.
The phone was seized when Gregor was pulled over during a traffic stop in Alcoa, Tennessee, Michael O'Hearn, a sergeant in the Ocean County Sheriff's crime-scene unit, testified.
Carnevale, the emergency room nurse at Southern Ocean Medical Center, testified that Gregor showed no emotion when he brought Corey to the medical center in Stafford Township at 3:53 p.m. on the day the boy died. She didn't change that testimony, despite defense attorney Mario Gallucci pointing out to her that the defendant appeared on surveillance footage to be crying in the hallway of the hospital.
"Corey was very sick,'' Carnevale testified, being questioned by Lento
The child mumbled a few words to her and then had a seizure, she said
"Corey seized, and then his heart stopped,'' Carnevale said.
The child was intubated, and medical personal began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him, she told the jury. Corey briefly regained a pulse - detected only with equipment designed to recognize otherwise undetectable pulses, but then his heart and breathing stopped again, she said.
Carnevale appeared emotional during her testimony. When Lento asked the witness if she remembered Corey without having to look at his medical records, she responded, "Of course I do, yes.''
She testified that Gregor told her the child's mother was a drug addict, and he did not want her to be contacted.
Carnevale acknowledged under cross-examination that she was a member of "Justice for Corey,'' a Facebook page set up by Corey's mother.
The jury Tuesday also heard testimony from Richard Cicerone, an employee of the state Division of Child Protection and Permanency, who said he fielded a phone call that Gregor placed to the state's child-abuse hotline at 10:02 a.m. on April 2, 2021, the same day the child died.
On the phone call, played in court for the jury, Gregor said Corey came home that morning and told him that his mother instructed him to lie to doctors and tell them that his father hit him.
Gregor also told Cicerone that Corey's mother was a drug addict, her sister just got out of jail for drugs and the boyfriend of the child's maternal grandmother is a twice-convicted felon. Gregor told Cicerone that the latter were always around Corey during visitation with his mother even though they weren't supposed to be, under court orders.
Cicerone testified last week outside the presence of the jury. At that time, the judge ruled the phone call could be played for the jury, with certain redactions, when Cicerone returned to testify.
Gregor is being held in the Ocean County Jail. If he is convicted of murder, he would face 30 years without the possibility of parole up to life in prison. He could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of child endangerment.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Treadmill abuse trial: Day 4 in Christopher Gregor murder case