Christian Choate

Christian Choate looks like he was a typical young boy that apparently was full of life. To look at his photo it is so hard to imagine what this child went through before his untimely death. I don’t know any adult, much less a child that could have survived such torture. Before you go any farther in this article please be aware that the details about what happened to this child is gory and hard to stomach. It had me in tears trying to type the article.

This precious little boy lived with his father and his stepmother and according to the reports he wasn’t treated like a human being. He was treated as if he was the family pet, only like a pet that the parents didn’t want. They locked him up in a metal dog cage.

Christian’s biological mother had not been allowed to see Christian or his sister when their father was given custody of the two in 2005. At the time Riley Choate and Kimberly Kubina Choate were living in a home in Merrillville, Indiana along with several other children.

The boy seemed to be quite healthy but when he started expressing how he missed his mother and saying that he wanted to live with her, his father started punishing him and he was locked up in the home’s basement regularly.

Later the family decided to move into a mobile home in another part of the county and when they did, things allegedly got worse for little Christian. That is when they started making him live and sleep inside a metal dog cage. The father and stepmother both repeatedly would strike and kick the boy. Christian once tried to escape from the cage but he was caught. His father then put the boy back in the cage but before he did, he secured the cage with seven different locks. His father would sit by his computer playing video games about racing while his own son would sit inside that cage.

The father ordered Christians sister, Christina (who was only 15 when her brother started being forced to stay inside the cage) to feed her brother and was given permission to unlock the cage and take him to the bathroom. She was to force him to do exercises and she was instructed to punish him if he refused to follow her orders.

It has been reported that sometimes they would take the boy’s hands and chain them to the top of the cage and one time that they did that he cried out so the stepmother took black spray paint and painted his hands while they were still chained. Once his health started going bad, he began soiling on himself so they kept him naked and made him stay in just a diaper. When he was allowed to take a bath they made him take it with ice cold water.

Another punishment for Christian was to take him outside the cage and chain his hands and feet to an upright bed frame til his feet would become numb making it difficult to stand alone. When some of the other children were caught trying to sneak food to him, the parents started refusing to feed him anything at all. The stepmother only yelled at the other children telling them, He needs to be locked up. He’s a dog.”

Riley Lowell Choate

In April 2009, reports are that Christian’s father got mad when the boy was too sick to eat. He took the boy and punched him with full force several times in the front, side and back of his head and then just threw him back inside the cage.

Apparently sometime in that same month, Christian’s sister couldn’t wake her brother up. He apparently died from the blows to his head from his father. The parents wrapped the boy’s body up in black plastic garbage bags and drove him to a wooded area, placed a Bible on his chest and then covered him with quick drying cement as they buried him in a shallow grave.

The family packed up and moved to Kentucky after that. Christina never told anyone about what had happened to her brother because she feared her father and what he would do to her if she told anyone. When they moved she was not allowed to use a telephone nor was she allowed to go to school. When her Father left her and the other children there with the stepmother, Christina finally got the nerve up to tell her biological mother about it who then went to the police about it.

The investigators in the case say it was two years after this child died before they were even made aware of the child missing. Actually they never even were aware that there was a child buried that they should have been searching for.  What is wrong with that picture? How come no one missed this child? Why weren’t questions asked when he didn’t attend school? With computers these days, his name should have been in the system and when he didn’t show up in a school it should have notified someone. Once again I think the system has failed another innocent child.

Kimberly Choate

The Father, 39 year old Riley Lowell Choate and the stepmother, 45 year old Kimberly Leona Kubina Choate both have been arrested for murder, battery, neglect of a dependent and criminal confinement. The coroner’s report after an autopsy was done on the boy’s body revealed that the cause of death was from a blunt force trauma, with internal bleeding and a skull fracture.

Friends and family members gathered at a funeral home yesterday in Gary Indiana to pay their respects for Christian during a Memorial service held in his honor. It is a shame that these people weren’t there to notice this child was not around for those two years and even before that, while he was being forced to live like an animal.

As sad as it is I have to say if all this is true about how they forced this little boy to live, then he is much better off with God now. At least now he is not being mistreated and he will never have to feel that pain again. God will be taking care of him now throughout eternity.

Jan Barrett