“Does God see what my dad does to me?”: Boy dies after being abused in NJ because he was “fat”

Christopher Gregor has been sentenced to 25 years in prison in New Jersey in connection with the death of his son Corey Micciolo, a 6-year-old boy who was caught on video being abused by his father on an exercise machine because he was supposedly fat.

Superior Court Judge Guy P. Ryan sentenced the father to 20 years for aggravated murder and five more years for child endangerment on Friday at the close of a dramatic trial. The judge ordered the terms to run consecutively, saying the aggravated murder was separate from the earlier child endangerment offense.

Five days before he died in the spring of 2021 as a result of child abuse, the boy asked his maternal grandmother, “Does God see what my dad does to me?” Rebecca Micciolo testified to the judge. “I told him God sees everything.” Her grandson then asked her “Why didn’t his dad go to hell, and I said, ‘One day he will,’” the grandmother continued in court, as quoted by Asbury Park Press.

On March 20, 2021, Gregor took his son to the gym in his residential building and forced him to run on an exercise machine, which was captured on surveillance footage. Caution is advised when viewing it. The boy fell several times as his father continued to lift him up and put him back on the treadmill, hitting his head in the process.

“Gregor made the boy lose weight because he thought he was fat. Gregor frequently weighed the boy [Corey] and made him exercise to lose weight,” his mother Breanna Micciolo told Inside Edition.

That video was one of the most dramatic pieces of evidence presented at Gregor’s trial. “Corey had a terrible time on that treadmill,” Judge Ryan said at sentencing. “It was brutal to watch that video.”

Barnegat resident Gregor (32) apologized for the treadmill incident, calling it “inexcusable,” but insisted he did nothing to cause his son’s death 13 days later.

The boy’s mother took him to a hospital after noticing bruising on his body in early April 2021. The boy died while in his father’s custody the next day. He died from blunt force trauma with lacerations to his heart and liver, a forensic pathologist cited by Ocean County prosecutors said, the report said. ABC News.

Gregor is a former high school football star and youth mentor who first met his son just a year before he allegedly abused him to death. According to the mother, there were worrying warning signs from the first time they met in 2019, when Corey was just 5 years old, she noted. New York Post.

The grieving mother said she “begged” child protective services to “get him away from his abuser,” but “no one listened or helped,” she wrote in the Change.org petition she started after the tragedy. The day before her son’s death, Micciolo said a judge denied her request for full custody. It’s unclear how or when the two parents met and why he was estranged from the boy for the first five years of his life.

Domestic violence is a constant in New York City and surrounding areas, between relatives, roommates and partners, even with victims who are minors. Every day in NYC, an average of 747 incidents of domestic violence are reported – including assault, abuse, verbal abuse – and about 65 homicides annually.

Four people, including two young children, were recently found stabbed to death in an apartment in Brooklyn, New York, and a relative was arrested for the crime.

Last month, Dimone Fleming was charged with killing her children at a shelter in the Bronx (NYC) in 2022. Also in July, Romney Desronvil was charged with taking his 3-year-old twin children from Queens (NYC) to a beach in Connecticut with the intention of drowning them, amid a bitter separation from his wife.

In April, a mother was arrested on suspicion of beating her 6-year-old daughter to death in the Bronx. Her two other children also showed signs of abuse. Also that month, another mother was charged with killing her 5-year-old twins in the Bronx.

On Good Friday, a 9-year-old Latino boy died in a burning car behind a high school in New Jersey and his father, a school employee, was accused of setting the fire after a domestic dispute.

In February, Lasasha Gouldbourne (31) was charged with involuntary manslaughter months after her newborn twin was found stuffed in a laundry bag in the Bronx (NYC). In January, a Hispanic woman killed her daughters and her husband and then took her own life inside her home in Union (NJ) after receiving an eviction order, authorities reported.

In late 2022, a former NYPD police officer was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the death of his 8-year-old autistic son, who suffered continuous abuse while in the custody of his father and stepmother in Long Island (NY). Months later, she was also sentenced in a separate trial.

In 2006, the Hispanic girl Nixzmary Brown (7) was attacked and killed by her stepfather with the complicity of her mother in Brooklyn.

If you are a victim or suspect that someone is being abused, especially if you are a minor or an elderly person:

I looked for help

• Call 911, 988 or (800)-942-6906.
• Text “WELL” to 65173.
• Check information at https://nycwell.cityofnewyork.us/es/ and www.988lineadevida.org