Bethel Park Police seek information in suspected abuse of 7-year-old boy

Bethel Park Police are asking for anyone who saw or encountered a 7-year-old boy between October when he went to live with his mother in the South Hills and last week when he was found unconscious and covered in bruises in her living room.

Kaiyla Bowers, 32, and her boyfriend, 24-year-old John Stone, both remain in the Allegheny County Jail, where they’ve been since a judge denied bail for both after their arrest March 22.

“We are asking for anyone who observed this child during the past five months or has any relevant information about Bowers or Stone to contact our investigations division,” township police wrote on Facebook on Tuesday. They can be reached at 412-831-6800 ext 836 or crimewatch@bethelpark.net.

Police initially responded to the apartment Bowers and Stone share shortly before 1 a.m. on March 19 for a report of a 7-year-old boy who was breathing but unresponsive.

Police and paramedics found the child on the living room floor with dried blood caked on his chapped lips, according to a criminal complaint. There were bruises on his arms and leg, police wrote, and his feet and ankles were badly burned.

Bowers told first responders the child had an iron deficiency, according to the complaint.

“He is always bruised,” police said she told them. “He will probably bruise more just by you touching him.”

To explain the burns to his feet and ankles, Bowers said the apartment did not have scald-proof faucets, and they used a thermometer to check the temperatures but the boy “had gotten in before the temperature was checked and his feet were burned,” according to the complaint.

Paramedics took the child to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where doctors noted burns across his body and groin and more bruises and scratches, according to the complaint.

Bowers and Stone both reiterated that the burns came from bathwater, though Stone admitted to officers when the boy misbehaved he would pick him up by the arms and put him in the corner, which he said could have caused bruising, police said.

Bowers said she didn’t seek treatment for her son because she was afraid “she would end up in the same situation she was currently in,” according to the complaint. Stone told police Bowers didn’t want to report his injuries “for fear (the child) would be sent back to live with his father.”

Inside the apartment, police found the 7-year-old’s room covered in urine and other body fluids, as well as clothing and sheets covered in the same, according to the complaint. A neighbor said they often heard screaming and shouting coming from Bowers’s apartment, noting that “it seems to always happen when Stone is watching the child.”

Stone and Bowers are both charged with two counts of aggravated assault and one count of endangering the welfare of children. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 5.