Giovanni Jennings’ shirt was stapled to the wall.
The 6-year-old boy, who went by the name Chulo, had been sent to the corner where he served his punishments and was told to face the wall. But he kept turning around, according to text messages from his mother’s boyfriend, Daniel Giacchina, who was watching him, according to testimony in Madison Heights’ 43rd District Court.
So Giacchina stapled Chulo’s shirt to the wall, pinning him in the corner, and texted the boy’s mother, Elaina Jennings, that he had fixed the problem. When Chulo kept sticking his butt out from the wall, Giacchina texted that he stapled his drawers as well. He sent Jennings a video of Chulo forcibly staying in the corner.
“I know babe thank you, you stapled him to the wall lmao,” Jennings responded.
This text thread was just days before Jennings called 911 to report Chulo was unresponsive. Hours later, after doctors unsuccessfully tried to repair his perforated bowel likely caused by blunt force trauma to his abdomen, Chulo was dead. Doctors found he was covered head to toe in cuts and bruises.
Jennings, 25, and Giacchina, 32, were ordered to stand trial Friday on charges of murder, first-degree child abuse and lying to police in connection with Chulo’s July 31 death in the Madison Heights mobile home where he lived with his mom, siblings, Giacchina and Giacchina’s grandmother. Giacchina also faces three felony firearm charges.
The most serious injuries, the abdominal trauma that the medical examiner said led to Chulo’s death, resulted in a bowel perforation. Photos of Chulo’s body showed bruising spotted across his torso.
Jennings allegedly told Madison Heights Detective Scott Spencer that Giacchina punched Chulo three times in the stomach before his death, and Chulo began throwing up. His condition worsened until she found him unresponsive.
Both Dr. Bradley Norat, a child abuse pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Michigan, and Dr. Nicole Croom, an assistant medical examiner at the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office, testified it would take a large amount of force to cause those externally visible bruises, like like being kicked or punched in the stomach, being in a car crash or slamming down on handlebars while riding a bike.
“It’s not just one spot, it’s each one of those areas where we see bruises that he would have to have that trauma over and over again,” Norat said.
Madison Heights’ 43rd District Court Judge Keith Hunt on Friday sent both cases to Oakland County Circuit Court after hearing three days of testimony about the abuse Chulo allegedly suffered from Jennings and Giacchina. Hunt said he suspected the concept of aiding and abetting a crime may weigh heavily in the case in the future, as Jennings and Giacchina are blaming each other for Chulo’s death.
Jennings’ attorney, Jordan Zuppke, said while Jennings spanked Chulo and maybe could have better protected him, she did not murder him. He asked Hunt to send Jennings to trial on involuntary manslaughter and second-degree child abuse charges instead of the felony murder and first-degree child abuse charges.
“I really believe all evidence flows to Daniel,” Zuppke said. “He’s the one who watches the children, who has the most access. … While Elaina is at work, Daniel is at home torturing this child.”
Giacchina’s attorney, Leonard Ballard, said prosecutors did not present any evidence that Giacchina killed Chulo.
Ballard said while Giacchina may have made some poor parenting choices by stapling Chulo to the wall, making him stand wet and shivering in front of an AC unit or making him stand in a corner for punishment, there is no evidence of premeditated murder.
“Can they say my client is the one who did this and therefore he has probable cause of murder? I think their case screams the opposite of that,” Ballard said.
Bruised from ‘head to toe’
One of the first people to make it to the scene, Madison Heights Fire Lt. Damon Brown, said he found Chulo lying naked on his side in the bathroom, not breathing and with no pulse.
“I saw a lot of bruising and different marks on his body and I recall immediately recognizing some of the patterns being consistent with abuse that we are trained for in school,” Brown said. “(He was bruised) pretty much from head to toe.”
Chulo’s torso, abdomen, face and buttocks were littered with numerous cuts and bruises, according to photos shown in court Monday. He had a swollen lip, a puncture cut and scrapes on his scalp and bruises on his lips, forehead, cheek, chin, eye, chest. He also had a healing wound on his leg that could have been from a cigarette burn or a BB gun, Croom said, and a vertical line of five small, circular wounds on his back.
He had a long, straight bruise on his buttocks that could have been from something like a whip or a belt, Croom said, hooked-shaped injuries on his buttocks and multiple bruises on his wrist. The thin lines of bruises on his wrist match injuries Norat said he’s seen from rope, zip ties or twine.
Jennings initially said she had only struck Chulo with the belt once, but later told Spencer that she hit him with the belt on five to six occasions over one month. She said Giacchina hit Chulo more than she did.
Detective Spencer testified that Jennings told him that Giacchina called her at about 2:10 p.m. July 30, saying Chulo had passed out and she needed to come home. She said when she came home, she found Chulo on his side on the shower floor and when she asked Giacchina what happened, he said he hit the boy.
Giacchina, however, told Spencer that “he was called by an unknown person who told him Chulo was unconscious.” He said Jennings told him to leave before police got there because he had a warrant.
A toxicology report found that Chulo had THC metabolite and a drug typically used for major depressive disorder in his system, Croom said.
‘We spank him, not beat him’
Chulo spent a lot of time sleeping in a 4.5 square foot corner in the bedroom, Spencer said. In that same area were BB gun holes and staple marks in the walls, Spencer said, and the scraps of what appeared to be a piece of clothing stapled to the wall.
Jennings’ cousin Anesha Montecinos said while she was visiting her cousin July 26, Giacchina told her Chulo was inside with his shirt stapled to the wall and could not come out because he was being punished.
“He did say that he had him stapled to a wall with his shirt,” Montecinos said. “I asked why and he said it’s a big enough shirt so he can move around. He didn’t know what to do, he never had issues like that with kids, so that was his next step.”
She didn’t like to hear the comment, she said, but she didn’t think anything of it “because my little cousin is not going to let anyone hurt her kids.”
In a jail phone call, Giacchina said he was wrestling with Chulo several days before his death and he “hit him too hard in the stomach.” Chulo told him it hurt, Giacchina said, and Jennings said he was playing too hard with him.
“I ain’t never tried to cause that boy no harm,” Giacchina said in the call. “I know I’m innocent.”
Giacchina’s grandmother urged him to take Chulo to see a psychiatrist, texting that he “cannot whip (the behavior issues) out of him.” Giacchina said the psychiatrist would not help and said she doesn’t “know s— about parenting.”
“Half the bruises he does to himself and the only place we whup him is on his ass,” Giacchina wrote in a text to his grandmother. “…We spank him, not beat him, not torture him.”