Joey Herminio Melendez was baby-sitting the toddler, who had bruises, scrapes, bites and other injuries from his head to his small feet, which also looked like they actually had been crushed.

He had an explanation for it all.

Melendez said he accidentally kneed the 18-month-old child in the head when they were hip-hop dancing in their Willow Street apartment, a police officer said today at Melendez's preliminary hearing.

Melendez said he also accidentally hit the child with his belt, while he was wiggling it like a snake, and accidentally stepped on the toddler's foot, while they were going down some steps.

The bites? They were from a "biting game," where he and the toddler "nibbled each other in fun," the officer testified.

Oh, and the child, who was his girlfriend's son, also had gotten into an ashtray and may have had some burns as well, Melendez offered.

Police did not buy it, and charged Melendez, 27, who had just moved here from Connecticut, with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and child endangerment in October.

After seeing color photos of the child's bruised body and listening to testimony of police, a doctor and a neighbor, Magisterial District Judge Maynard Hamilton ordered Melendez held for trial on the charges.

No reasonable person could look at the photos and think the injuries came from an accident, Hamilton said, adding, "I believe this was malicious conduct."

Police were called to the apartment, at 2713 Willow Street Pike, after a neighbor heard the sounds of banging, yelling, cursing and a child crying, on and off throughout the afternoon and evening of Oct. 28.

Onita Barth said she knew the little boy and his mother, Melissa Lyons, and was relieved when she saw Lyons leaving their apartment parking lot at dinnertime, thinking she "got out of the situation."

She saw a man she did not know, whom she identified as Melendez, outside, in long pants and no shirt at that time.

But after Lyons left, the sounds of a child crying, a man yelling and banging continued off and on throughout the night.

At one point, Barth said, she heard a man yelling, "Shut up! Shut the (expletive) up! She's not coming back."

By 11 p.m., when she still heard the child crying, she decided to call police.

Lyons testified that Melendez had just moved into her apartment that day. Melendez was tired and yelled at her son to be quiet a few times, slamming his hand on the floor, she said.

Lyons left to go to beauty school that night, she testified. Her son only had a small scrape on his head, from falling earlier in the day, she said. When she returned, police officers and ambulance workers were at her apartment.

West Lampeter Township Police Cpl. Andrew Bedsole said he found the child lying unresponsive in his crib when police went into Lyons' apartment.

The child was taken to Lancaster General Hospital's emergency room, where Dr. Michael Reihart examined him.

Reihart said the boy had crush injuries, bruises, bites, scrapes and other marks from his head to his feet, so much so that "to precisely describe each injury was almost impossible."

Reihart said the injuries were not accidental, and noted it was one of the worst cases of child abuse he had seen in his 15 years as a doctor.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney James Gratton, Reihart acknowledged the X-rays and a CT scan showed no broken bones or head injuries, but said that sometimes those things do not show up on scans.

West Lampeter Township Police Sgt. Billy Wilson interviewed Melendez, who told police that he was caring for the toddler but that the child's injuries resulted accidentally as they were playing games and going outside for a walk.

Gratton asked for the aggravated assault charge to be dropped, saying there was no evidence of serious bodily injury.

Assistant District Attorney Daniel Dye disagreed, noting that Reihart testified that, left unstopped, the injuries could have resulted in more serious injuries or even death.


Staff writer Cindy Stauffer can be reached at cstauffer@LNPnews.com or 481-6024.