Nikki Walker spoke softly as she told a jury about the last time she saw her 2-year-old son, Caleb, alive.
"He was wonderful. He played with his brother," Walker said while testifying Tuesday in the trial of Ivory Blackshire, who is charged with homicide by child abuse in Caleb's death.
Walker said Caleb didn't act as if anything was wrong with him when she left that morning to go to work at Urban Outfitters. She knew when she came home that something was wrong.
"She had no idea she was leaving her son for the last time," Assistant Solicitor Ashley Hammack said during opening statements. "She arrived home to a front yard full of police cars and an ambulance, taking Caleb's lifeless body away. Three days later, Caleb Walker was dead."
Hammack told jurors they would hear from emergency responders and doctors who worked on Caleb in the emergency room and hear testimony about the bruises they found on the boy, the bleeding in his eyes and the bleeding on his brain.
Blackshire, wearing a suit and glasses, sat quietly with his attorney as the state called its first witnesses.
Detective Carlos Colindres, of the Aiken Department of Public Safety, was the first responder on the scene. He told jurors he arrived to see Blackshire in the front yard, holding the 2-year-old's lifeless body, and asked what happened.
"I don't remember exactly what he said, but (he said) it was really hot that day, they didn't have any air conditioning in the trailer, the child was complaining he was thirsty, he went to take a nap and he hasn't woken up and is not breathing," Colindres said.
Colindres didn't talk with Blackshire again after laying the boy on the ground and beginning CPR, he said.
Michael New, of Aiken County EMS, testified he didn't see any signs of trauma on the boy when he arrived and took over CPR.
He tried, unsuccessfully, several times to insert an IV into Caleb Walker's arm but said he had "poor" IV sites. He intubated the boy on the way to Aiken Regional Medical Centers, where custody was transferred to emergency room staff.
Jerome Walker, who is Nikki Walker's brother and Caleb's uncle, was living in the home when the incident happened.
Hammack asked if he had ever spanked or disciplined Caleb or his brother, to which he responded "a couple of times," but not on the day of Caleb's death.
Nikki Walker told the court she has multiple sclerosis, which has worsened since Caleb's death.
She had to be assisted from her wheelchair to the witness stand, where she told jurors Blackshire was her boyfriend, and that she left her two sons in his care that day while she went to work.
Court continued briefly Tuesday afternoon before adjourning, and is expected to resume at 10 a.m. today.
Teddy Kulmala covers the crime and courts beat for the Aiken Standard and has been with the newspaper since August 2012. He is a native of Williston and majored in communication studies at Clemson University.
