Boy Says Man Sought Map of House Before Bombing : Simi Valley: The defendant’s complaint of back pain interrupts the 7-year-old’s testimony at a preliminary hearing.

A 7-year-old boy testified Tuesday that a man accused of tossing a pipe bomb into the bedroom of a Simi Valley couple asked him to draw a map of the victims’ house in a pile of kitty litter just days before the attack.

The testimony in Ventura County Municipal Court opened a preliminary hearing for James R. McKeever, 43, who faces two charges of attempted murder for allegedly hurling an incendiary pipe bomb into a Simi Valley house and injuring his wife’s ex-husband, John Monroe, and Monroe’s wife, Charlene Mayer.

McKeever’s wife, Karen Dunlop, and Monroe had been involved in a bitter custody dispute over their son, 7-year-old Johnny Monroe, who testified Tuesday.

The boy essentially “testified that the defendant asked him to draw a picture of his daddy’s house, and he did it in the kitty litter outside, by the garage door of the McKeever house,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Donna Thonis said.

Before the incident, the boy spent about half his time with his mother and McKeever, and the remainder with his father and Mayer. But after McKeever’s arrest, full custody of the boy was given to Monroe and Mayer, the father and stepmother, Thonis said.

Prosecutors have charged that McKeever assembled the complex incendiary bomb that was thrown through the bedroom window of the house, where it caught fire and exploded.

Monroe, 34, suffered shrapnel injuries in his leg and torso and Mayer suffered serious leg injuries.

The bomb, according to court documents, was a capped, 1 1/2-inch-diameter pipe full of gunpowder and ball bearings, duct-taped to a butane cylinder and a plastic jug of gasoline.

Detectives searched McKeever’s Westwood Street residence and found gasoline, bleach, duct tape, two cans of propane and a box of ball bearings, according to court documents.

McKeever sat through the boy’s testimony in a courtroom chair for part of Tuesday morning.

But less than 10 minutes after Monroe began testifying about the custody fight, the defendant’s attorney called for a break.

Defense attorney Bruce Jones said McKeever could not continue sitting through the hearing because severe pain from an old work-related back injury had flared up.

Municipal Judge Thomas Hutchins postponed the hearing for several hours so McKeever could receive a medical evaluation from the jail doctor.

The doctor gave McKeever some of the same muscle relaxants that the defendant was taking for his back when he entered the jail a month ago, and ruled that the defendant was healthy enough to proceed with the hearing in the afternoon.

When court reconvened, McKeever was brought to the courtroom on his back on a hospital gurney--unable to stand or speak because of the pain, according to Jones.

Jones said the muscle relaxers--Robaxin and Advil--were making McKeever too drowsy to participate in his own defense, and he asked the judge to delay the hearing to Monday and appoint an outside doctor to examine the man.

Hutchins refused both motions.

But he granted Thonis’ request to put the hearing off until 1:30 p.m. today because finishing the hearing in spite of McKeever’s complaint of drowsiness could have opened the door for reversal on appeal of any later conviction.

McKeever is being held in Ventura County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.