GUILTY NY - Brooke Stagles, 3, beaten to death, Rochester, 13 Nov 2016

John Geer said social workers with Child Protective Services should face criminal charges in the death of 3-year-old Brook Stagles and he is taking his fight to the Governor's Office.

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Brook Stagles died at the hospital last month after she was brought there unresponsive. A medical examiner ruled she suffered blunt force trauma to her stomach.

Brook's father, Michael Stagles, is charged with criminally negligent homicide. His girlfriend, Erica Bell, is charged with murder...

Jury selection will begin on May 15.

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Brook's father Michael and his girlfriend, Erica Bell, were in front of Judge Christopher Ciaccio in Monroe County Court.

Judge Ciaccio ruled Michael Stagles and Erica Bell will stand trial together on July 17 for the death of Brook.

Bell is charged with second-degree murder; Michael Stagles is charged with criminally negligent homicide.

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The father of a 3-year-old girl whose death was ruled a homicide will be released from jail while he awaits trial..... His trial is scheduled to start August 1.

Erica Bell's trial is slated to begin on July 17.

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JusticeWillBeServed said:

Dad of Brook Stagles released from jail while awaiting trial

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2017/06/21/michael-stagles-released-jail-while-awaiting-trial/415328001/



Father, girlfriend to be tried separately for death of Brook Stagles

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JusticeWillBeServed said:

Dad of Brook Stagles released from jail while awaiting trial

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2017/06/21/michael-stagles-released-jail-while-awaiting-trial/415328001/



Father, girlfriend to be tried separately for death of Brook Stagles

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JusticeWillBeServed said:

http://www.whec.com/news/erica-bell-death-minor-girl-brook-trial-postponed/4542896/

Erica Bell's trial has been postponed and is now scheduled to begin on September 11th.

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Michael Stagles had his trial set for September 25. Erica Bell will be tried separately; her trial is scheduled to begin September 11.

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The autopsy report for Brook Stagles is out, detailing how the three-year-old Greece girl died last November.

The report lists blunt force trauma to the abdomen as the main cause of her death. Prosecutors assigned to the case said Brook Stagles also had multiple injuries and contusions from head to toe.

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On Tuesday Bell waived her right to a jury trial and decided to let County Court Judge Christopher Ciaccio determine her fate.

Bell's trial is tentatively scheduled to start Sept. 11, but could start later.

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The last days and hours of Brook Stagles' young life were a hell of increasing agony and sickness.

Over a three-day span, as infection from a perforated bowel ravaged Brook's tiny body, the woman accused in her slaying her not only ignored the youngster's increasing symptoms but thwarted attempts by others to get her necessary medical care, prosecutors say.

Calling Erica Bell's actions toward Brook, her boyfriend's daughter, "wicked, evil, depraved and inhuman," Assistant District Attorney Patrick Gallagher laid out the state's case on Monday morning during opening arguments in Bell's second-degree murder trial.

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In his opening arguments, Bell's attorney Lawrence L. Kasperek said he concedes Brook's injuries — her multiple bruises, her ruptured intestines — but said his client is not the indifferent monster prosecutors paint. Instead, he said, Bell and Brook both were victims of horrific domestic violence perpetrated by Stagles.

He said Stagles repeatedly beat Bell during their relationship, at one point even burning her with cigarettes. And, that in her abused state, Kasperek said, she was unable to protect herself or Brook from Stagles' fury. He said the delay in seeking medical treatment stemmed from not understanding the extent of the girl's injuries, not disregard for her life and Bell's admissions in jailhouse phone calls to having beaten the girl were attempts by Bell to protect Michael Stagles from the consequences of his actions.

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When Brook Stagles arrived at the emergency room of Rochester General Hospital in the afternoon hours of Nov. 14, she wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.

Doctors rushed to give her aid, performing CPR, giving her intravenous antibiotics and epinephrine shots in an attempt to restart her tiny heart.

“My first thought when I saw her was that I was looking at a corpse,” said Dr. Kevin O’Gara, the pediatric emergency physician who first treated Brook on the day her father, Michael Stagles, brought her to the hospital.

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In afternoon testimony, Brook's great-grandmother Gail Geer testified that she last saw Brook alive on Nov. 5, 2016. She said at the time, Brook's mother, her granddaughter Ashley Geer, and Michael Stagles — who had broken up in July of that year — were sharing custody and that she would go and pick up Brook every Thursday and return her on Sundays.

She said Brook began showing up with bruises shortly after Erica Bell had moved in with Michael Stagles that summer.

"Every time she came over, she had new marks on her body," she said.

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It was during Dr. Kevin O'Gara's testimony that the court first saw pictures of Brook in the hospital bed. She had medical tubes coming out everywhere, and had bruises on her face, arms, legs, abdomen and back.

An Ogden Police Department officer who saw her that day also testified to those bruises and choked up remembering the details, as did Rochester Police Department Tech Courtney Carbonel, who photographed inside the house where Brook lived with her father, Michael Stagles, and Bell. Carbonel testified that house was dirty, with motorbikes in the middle of the living room, bugs and dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and kitchen walls, and clothes, medicine bottles and other junk strewn across the basement where Brook's bed was.

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In her testimony, Dr. Nadia Granger detailed her external and internal examination of Brook's body during an autopsy that took place the day after the girl's death.

Granger confirmed that Brook's body was covered with bruises — on both sides of her face, her arms, legs and torso — and that her death was the result of a widespread, systemic infection called sepsis that came about due to a hole in the girl's bowel that allowed stool and bacteria to freely enter her abdominal cavity.

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Also on the stand today were Erica Bell’s sister and her boyfriend. They testified that they saw Brook looking very ill at their baby shower. They say they called 911 the next day since they were so worried about her. That turned out to be the day before she died.

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In a series of jailhouse phone calls played Thursday morning in Monroe County Court, Erica Bell urged her grandmother to not allow her boyfriend to take Brook Stagles to the hospital, and then, after learning the girl had died, worried how long she’d be in jail if convicted of killing her.

“How am I supposed to live the rest of my life with this?” Bell said in a Nov. 16, 2016, phone call with her grandmother Deborah Smith of Spencerport. Smith had just told Bell that 3-year-old Brook died on Nov. 14 at Strong Memorial Hospital of complications from a beating. She died shortly after emergency surgery for a ruptured bowel.

Smith testified that Bell had told her on Nov. 12 that she had punched the girl in the stomach. In the phone call, Bell said she struck her “like three times.”

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Accused child killer Erica Bell wrapped up her testimony on Wednesday, repeating her claim that she lied about causing Brook Stagles' fatal injuries because she feared the wrath of Brook's father Michael Stagles.

On the stand, Bell said she didn't report the abuse because she had no place to go, having alienated her family and friends by stealing to support her heroin addiction. Also, she said, when Brook began exhibiting signs of serious illness, Stagles told her to tell her grandmother she'd punched the child in the stomach in order to gauge her reaction and to shift blame from him. His fear, she said, was that Child Protective Services would take Brook away.

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In his closing arguments, defense attorney Lawrence Kasperek said the state failed to prove its case that Bell exhibited "depraved indifference to human life" when she failed to get medical care for Brook after the girl began exhibiting symptoms of illness on Nov. 11.

Although Bell admitted in a phone call prosecutors played in court last week that she had punched Brook three times in the stomach, the defense played a different phone call on Wednesday in which Bell said Michael Stagles was the one who really hit the girl.

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In her closing arguments, Monroe County Assistant District Attorney Sara VanStrydonck homed in on the jailhouse phone calls as the "best evidence" against Bell. Just after learning that Brook had died two days previously, Bell in the calls admitted to her grandmother that she struck the girl three times in the stomach, then wondered whether she would be charged with murder and how long she would have to stay in prison.

VanStrydonck said the calls later that day, when Bell recanted and blamed Michael Stagles, were a "calculated and careful fabrication" where Bell came up with an alternate theory to avoid taking responsibility for what she had done.

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