A friend who was present when two boys were beaten in a South Toledo home’s basement before their disappearances and deaths in late 2022 described those beatings in court Tuesday.
Patrick Yingling, Jr.’s testimony followed that of Dr. Jeffrey Hudson, deputy Lucas County coroner, in the trial of Brent Kohlhofer, 42, and Charles Walker, 34, who are charged with two counts each of aggravated murder, murder, and kidnapping.
Dr. Hudson, said the lacerations, swelling, and other blunt-force injuries he saw on the heads of Ke’Marion Wilder, 16, and Kyshawn Pittman, 15, were not enough to have caused death. He also testified that only young Wilder had injuries consistent with strangulation to include in his autopsy reports.
Still, Dr. Hudson said in Lucas County Common Pleas Court, what was known of young Pittman’s death — his body having been found in a burned-out house’s basement alongside young Wilder’s — was sufficient to rule its manner a homicide even if the cause could only be narrowed to “homicide by unspecified means.”
Under cross-examination by Cleveland lawyer Brandon Henderson, representing Kohlhofer, Dr. Hudson agreed that the boys’ head injuries could have resulted from pistol whippings. That is what Yingling, now 19, said was what happened to them in the basement of the home of Corbin Gingrich and Carrissa Eames the night of Dec. 3, 2022, before they vanished.
Their bodies turned up 12 days later in the rubble of a burned-out house at 3015 Chase St. in the North End.
Yingling, who admitted to delinquency for obstruction of justice last year in Lucas County Juvenile Court for lying to case investigators, said Gingrich and then Cruz Garcia, also charged in the case, beat the boys in the basement in the 500 block of Maumee Avenue during a confrontation that began with Gingrich accusing young Wilder of having stolen a gun from his house.
Yingling said that confrontation ended with Garcia leading the boys out a back door of the house with their hands bound with electronics-accessory cords and bags over their heads. He initially testified he could not see anyone else in the dark alley behind the house, but later said he saw two masked figures clad in black — a story change he attributed to not understanding his prior questioning.
Investigators have accused Kohlhofer and Walker of being the final players in the boys’ disappearances and deaths. In four days of jury-trial testimony, neither have yet to be connected to the case.
Cruz Garcia, who had faced the same charges, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in late January in a sealed agreement, and Gingrich pleaded guilty to undisclosed charges last week under a similar seal. Their sentencings are respectively scheduled for May 23 and June 13.
Dr. Hudson said young Wilder’s remains had no ligature marks, so he was probably strangled manually. It is possible, he said, young Pittman was asphyxiated by means, such as smothering or use of a plastic bag, that do not leave evidence. The lack of soot or heat injury in both boys’ airways and the absence of carbon monoxide or cyanide in their blood showed they were dead before the fire, the deputy coroner said.
Yingling, a brother of Carrissa Eames, said he and Brian Wilson, Jr., a nephew of Gingrich, were playing video games and smoking marijuana in Gingrich’s basement when young Wilder and young Pittman arrived and eventually joined them. The confrontation began, he said, when Gingrich and two others — Don Eames, Jr., an older brother to Carrissa Eames and Yingling, and Gabriel Garcia, a friend of Gingrich — came down into the basement.
Yingling said he retreated to the middle of the stairway and, after Cruz Garcia showed up, left for the dining room. But even from there, Yingling said, the sounds of violence were audible from the basement.
Under further questioning and cross-examination, Yingling said young Pittman pulled a gun when Gingrich, who also was armed, and the others came downstairs, but Don Eames disarmed the boy and then bound him and young Wilder.
The summoning of Cruz Garcia, another Gingrich friend, amped up the situation’s scariness, Yingling said, because he was much more violent than Gingrich toward the boys, whom he accused of having robbed his mother at gunpoint. Even Don Eames was afraid of Garcia, he said, because of a past conflict at a bar involving the two.
Yingling said that after the boys were taken away, he and the Eamses went to the Oregon home of their mother, Crystal Laforge-Yingling, where Gingrich also turned up. Along the way, he said, Carrissa Eames told him not to tell investigators anything and directed Don Eames to ditch the gun he had taken from young Pittman.
Ms. Laforge-Yingling and Diamond Rivera, Cruz Garcia’s girlfriend, both pleaded no contest to obstructing justice last year for lying to investigators and received probation, while young Wilson admitted in juvenile court to delinquency for felonious assault. Murder and kidnapping charges are pending against the Eameses and Gabriel Garcia.
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