GRACE Kalen told the court Friday morning that three-year-old Kody Fitial started shaking and crying when Stacey Laniyo called out his name.
“He was scared, because he knew something was going to happen,” Kalen said in describing the child’s physical reaction to Laniyo a month before his death.
She also testified about the bruises she saw on the boy on March 12, 2020.
“When I came that morning, Nang [an elderly member of the household] called me. She was sitting on the couch with Kody. She removed the blanket and I saw purple-bluish marks on Kody’s arms, legs and thighs,” Kalen said in open court.
Kalen said “Lani [Stacey Laniyo] came out of the room and told Nang that she hit Kody with the broom and broke it on him.”
Kalen said the boy became very ill and was “not active” as he used to be.
Kalen, who works for the household of Lynn Fitial, attends to Fitial’s elderly father.
Laniyo, 37, and Fitial, 45, were arrested following the death of the three-year-old boy in March 2020. The boy was an adopted son of Fitial and was in the care of Laniyo.
Laniyo and Fitial were each charged with one count of child abuse. The court has granted their request to have separate trials.
According to the prosecution, Laniyo struck the boy with a tree branch, a broom, or her hand or by biting him, “resulting in injury clearly beyond the scope of reasonable corporal punishment and harming or threatening the child’s physical or mental health and well-being.”
As for Fitial, the prosecution said she failed to provide medical care for the boy resulting in his death.
Assistant Attorney General Coleen St. Clair has impeached Fitial’s testimony, saying that Fitial provided testimony contrary to what she told police.
Fitial, in her testimony, said “there were a lot of things in the statement that are not true. [The police investigator] wrote stuff about what my mom said and wrote it like it was from me. What my sister-in-law said the investigator would say it was what Stacey [Laniyo] said. She mixed up a lot of things.”
Fitial was referring to the transcript of her interview with the investigator that Fitial signed and was presented to her during the jury trial of Stacey Laniyo to “refresh” her memory.
Laniyo is represented by attorney Mark Scoggins who has objected to almost all of the questions asked by the prosecutor to the witnesses.
Scoggins also verbally moved for a mistrial because of what he described as a “lack of foundation” in the prosecution’s line of questioning.
Laniyo’s trial began on June 14, 2021.
Besides Kalen and Fitial, the prosecution also called the following individuals to testify: crime scene investigator Lt. Mary Louise Tanaka, Dr. Rodney Klassen and Dr. Philip Dauterman of the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.
Tanaka took photographs of the boy at the morgue, Klassen called the boy’s time of death at 11:04 a.m. on March 16, 2020, and Dauterman conducted the autopsy on the boy.
