Germantown Mother Sentenced to 25 Years for Lighting 8-Year-Old Son on Fire and Neglecting Care

According to the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office, “In the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, MD, the Honorable Rachel McGuckian has sentenced defendant, Kimberly Tyler, 31, of Germantown, to 30 years in prison suspend all but 25 years to serve and five years of supervised probation upon release.

Judge McGuckian issued the sentence on Friday, April 12, 2024. Tyler was convicted by a jury on December 7, 2023, following a four-day trial, on multiple charges including First-Degree Child Abuse and Conspiracy to Commit Neglect of a Minor of her 8-year-old son.”

Per the news release: This stems from an incident in May of 2020, when the defendant lit her 8-year-old son on fire. The details are included below as adapted from a proffer entered into the court.

“This was among the worst we have seen when it comes to child abuse cases. The level of harm caused by someone in the ultimate position of trust, the child’s mother, is unfathomable. Our hearts are with the young victim and those now entrusted with his care. We thank the judge for fashioning an appropriate sentence and Assistant State’s Attorneys Sheila Bagheri and John Grochowski for their work on this highly emotional and upsetting case,” said State’s Attorney John McCarthy.

Codefendants:

• Kimball Tyler (victim’s grandfather)- Testified against his daughter at trial. He pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment and received a probation before judgement sentence.
• Chareese Snorgrass-Tyler (victim’s stepmother) – Pleaded guilty to neglect of a minor. She was sentenced to five years in prison suspend all but six months to serve and five years of supervised probation upon release.

**  FACTUAL SUMMARY

In May 2020, this Defendant, in an act of punishment, burned her 8-year-old child causing him to be engulfed in flames and suffering serious and permanent physical injury. This happened inside their apartment kitchen at the 12000 block of Falling Water Circle, Germantown, Montgomery County, Maryland. The victim suffered third-degree “full thickness” burns on both sides of his upper arms, chest, and neck, and second and first-degree burns to his face and other areas of his upper body. In total, 25% of his body surface was burned.

The Defendant, upset with her son for eating cereal and making a mess, punished him in their kitchen by pouring rubbing alcohol on his hand and lighting it on fire. The fire spread out of control, causing the child to be engulfed in flames from his torso to his head. The Defendant’s wife and co-Defendant, Chareese Snorgrass-Tyler (hereinafter “Chareese”), and her younger sister were present. The Defendant and her wife’s five other minor children, all younger than the victim, were in their bedroom. The Defendant and Chareese threw the victim in the shower. The Defendant’s sister told her “you shouldn’t do that” and the Defendant responded that everyone is always worried about the victim and that “nobody gives an f about me.” The Defendant raised concerns that she was going to go to jail.

Instead of calling 911 or seeking any medical attention, the Defendant called her parents, co-Defendants Kimball Tyler (hereinafter “Kimball”) and Lisa Jones (hereinafter “Lisa”) to come over and help her deal with the situation. None of them sought medical attention for the victim whose entire upper body had been burned. Instead, the Defendant and Kimball went to the store and bought bandages and burn cream for the victim. Back at the apartment, Kimball wrapped the victim up in gauze. Kimball told the Defendant, “you can’t hide this” due to concerns that the Defendant would try and cover up the crime. The Defendant, Chareese, Kimball, and Lisa all agreed and conspired that the victim would go stay with Kimball and Lisa for a while in their home in Howard County, Maryland. It was agreed, based on this Defendant’s wishes, that Kimball and Lisa would attempt to care for the victim on their own rather than take him to a doctor or the hospital.

The victim stayed with Kimball and Lisa for approximately two weeks. During that time, Kimball would frequently video call this Defendant and Chareese and show the victim’s condition and urge that he needed medical attention. The Defendant would ignore these requests. In these video calls, the victim appeared heavily bandaged and in debilitating pain, grimacing as he struggled to stand up on his own.

While the victim was being cared for by Kimball and Lisa, this Defendant continued to live her life as if nothing was wrong. She would have people over at her house and would be smoking and drinking. The Defendant wanted the victim out of sight and out of mind. When people would inquire of the Defendant where the victim was, she would simply tell them that he was visiting his grandparents. During the two weeks the victim was at Kimball and Lisa’s apartment, the Defendant went to visit him one time. Despite further pleas that the victim needed medical attention, the Defendant said “in this situation nobody has to deal with it but her and her son and they all need to stay out of her business.” The Defendant admitted to her younger sister that she had poured alcohol on the victim and lit him on fire based on a trend she had seen going around on YouTube.

Eventually, Kimball brought the victim back to the Defendant’s residence saying that he could no longer care for the child on his own and that he needed proper medical attention. When Kimball tells the victim that he is going back to his mother’s house, the victim begins to cry. For a couple days, the victim remained in the Defendant and Chareese’s care and neither of them sought any medical attention for him. Instead, they were consistently calling Kimball and telling him he had to come back and get the victim because they did not have the time or capacity to care for him themselves.

On May 30, 2020, Kimball went to the Defendant’s residence, picked up the victim, and finally drove him to Children’s National Medical Center (hereinafter “Children’s”). After the victim was dropped off at the hospital, Kimball and Lisa let the Defendant know they had taken him there. The Defendant became angry and yelled at her parents for taking the victim there against her wishes. She immediately went into damage control and insinuated to her younger sister that if she were to be asked about anything, that she was to tell people that the victim had spilled hot grease on himself by accident while she was frying chicken in the kitchen.

When the victim arrived at Children’s he was screaming and crying in pain. His wounds were infected and there was puss dripping off of them. His wounds smelled so foul, that an infectious disease team was brought in to assess them. He had multiple contractures on his next and upper extremities where the scars were so thick and shrunken up that it limited his joint mobility.

At Children’s, the staff reported the suspected abuse to Montgomery County Police who then began investigating the case. When the Defendant was interviewed, she told police that she was frying chicken around 10am and left it unattended when the victim came over and spilled the hot grease on himself, causing the burns. The Defendant went so far as to draw a picture for the police to show how small the kitchen is and how this could be plausible.

Until May 30, 2020, neither the Defendant, nor anyone else in the victim’s family, made any attempt whatsoever to obtain professional medical advice or assistance of any kind despite the obvious need for serious medical intervention. Kimball’s efforts to care for the victim were wholly inadequate and, as a direct result of the delay in taking the victim to the hospital, his burns became severely infected. When the victim presented at the hospital, he was screaming in pain and his wounds smelled so foul that the infectious disease team had to intervene.

Since May 30, 2020, the victim has undergone approximately 20 surgeries to excise dead tissue and graft skin, and will likely remain scarred for the rest of his life. While at Children’s, he contracted MRSA from how long he was in the hospital and for the number of surgeries he had to undergo. Changing his dressings was an extremely painful process, lasting up to 2 hours with the victim screaming and crying during the process. At some points, the doctors were operating on him twice a week. He had to undergo physical therapy and psychiatric treatment. His medical records are about 5,000 pages long. He remained admitted to Children’s Hospital for several months before he was even in any condition to leave. Had the victim not been so woefully neglected by this Defendant and her co-defendants, his injuries and his recovery would not have been so severe.

OTHER BAD ACTS

Although the Defendant has had no prior criminal convictions, she has had previous involvement with Child Welfare Services (“CWS”) as it related to the victim. In 2019, CWS completed both a child abuse investigation and an Alternative Response – Physical Abuse assessment. In the physical abuse investigation, CWS found that the victim had sustained several welts and bruises to his thighs, one of which was a loop mark. The Defendant told CWS that the victim had rolled over a closer door metal track, but then also admitted to physically disciplining him and injuring him. In the Physical Abuse assessment, CWS noted that the victim suffered scratches to his neck, which he said were caused by the Defendant. The Defendant admitted she may have grabbed the victim too hard.

According to the Defendant’s sister, a few nights prior to the crime, the victim had stolen candy and the Defendant took a lighter and heated up the metal part with the flame and pressed it against the victim’s hand for several seconds. This happened more than one time. Although it did not leave any sort of mark, the victim was crying in pain.

There were also instances where the Defendant would purposely humiliate the victim in front of the other children and at school. The victim suffered from Hirschsprung’s disease, which caused him to have trouble controlling his bowel movements at times. There were times when the victim would soil himself and the Defendant and Chareese would discipline him by dressing him in his sister’s clothes and calling him girl’s names. Sometimes, if the victim would have an accident before school, the Defendant and Chareese would not allow him to shower and make him go to school like that to humiliate him. They would send the victim to school in diapers that were too tight on him. Horrifyingly, the Defendant would also discipline the victim by giving him unnecessary enemas. On one occasion, the victim tried to remove the enema himself and received a spanking. According to family members, the victim was also very proud of his hair. To discipline him, the Defendant would give him bad haircuts, cutting patches in his hair and then making fun of him in front of the other children. The victim and his siblings were also always hungry and not properly fed at home. When the victim arrived at Children’s, the medical staff noted malnutrition as one of his conditions.