Man Sentenced in Death of Child Under His Care

A 30-year-old Granada Hills man charged with the 1988 murder of his girlfriend’s young son pleaded guilty Friday to involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment.

Ricky Edward Smith was sentenced by Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Kathryne Ann Stoltz to three years probation and the 1 1/2 years he had already served in jail for killing Stephen Boone, 4.

The boy died on July 13, 1988, a day after he suffered head and neck injuries while under Smith’s care in a North Hollywood apartment. Smith, a boyfriend and sometime roommate of Stephen’s mother, was arrested nine days later and charged with murder.

The murder charge was dropped in February, 1989, after Van Nuys Municipal Judge Aviva K. Bobb ruled there was sufficient evidence only to prove voluntary manslaughter.

As his trial neared, officials permitted Smith to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter because there was insufficient evidence to prove Boone’s death was anything but a freak accident, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jay A. Lipman.

In addition, Smith had no known history of child abuse and the court received numerous favorable letters about him from the victim’s mother and grandmother as well as his own family and friends, Lipman said.

Neither Lipman nor Smith’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Robert A. Fefferman made a sentencing recommendation to the judge.

Los Angeles Police Detective James Brown, who investigated the case, said Smith was disciplining Boone for an unknown reason by making him run back and forth between his bedroom and the living room when the boy’s head struck Smith’s outstretched hand.

Smith then shook the boy intending to revive him, Brown said, but because the boy’s neck was broken, he was unable to support his head and suffered from something known as “shaken infant syndrome,” a brain injury that usually is caused by shaking a small infant. The neck muscles of an older child’s neck are generally strong enough to prevent the shaking from damaging the brain, Brown said.

Lt. Richard Iddings of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Child Protection Unit said that most of the 13 infant murders investigated last year were due to shaken infant syndrome.

Parents sometimes shake a child to quiet him or revive him from an injury. “They think they’re shaking life back into the child when in fact they’re killing them,” Iddings said.

The mother’s other surviving children are in foster care awaiting dependency hearings, Brown said.