Mom pushed son, 2, and ‘called him names,’ grandma testifies at methadone murder trial
In the days before 2-year-old Zayden JayNesahkluah died in a South Broadway motel room after ingesting methadone, his mom asked her paternal grandmother to take him for the summer because he was “hard for her to handle.”
Kimberly Compass contacted Patricia Lefors on May 28, 2019, asking for help with her toddler son, who’s been described in court this week as a “unique” and “fun” but “difficult child” with possible developmental disabilities. Compass is on trial on charges of first-degree felony murder over his May 31, 2019, death.
“She just showed up” and “asked me if I would take care of” Zayden and his 3-year-old sister for the entire summer, Lefors testified Wednesday.
Lefors said yes and told Compass to leave the kids with her. But Compass took them home to help her pack.
“She never brought them back.”
That same day, Compass also sent text messages to Andrea Dixon, the executive director of a local family crisis ministry called Faith Builders, begging her to “see about something” that would help her with her son.
When Dixon responded asking where Zayden was at, Compass replied: “With me.”
But Compass said in the texts that she wanted to send him away for “a little” bit.
Maybe for a week or a weekend or a month, she wrote, adding: “Summer lol something I need help.”
Dixon arranged care for Zayden at a home in the country she thought “was a really good fit” where he would be with other children like him, she testified Tuesday.
She had helped Compass out with things like food, diapers and care for Zayden before. When he was an infant, for example, he stayed with Dixon for five months because a machine that monitored his breathing for signs of apnea “was a lot for Kimberly” to deal with, Dixon testified.
But Zayden never made it to the home.
That’s because three days later, the 2-year-old was dead in Room 19 of the Sunset Motel, 2328 S. Broadway, lying in a pool of vomit that was the same bright pink as his mother’s methadone. Reginald “Reggie” Whiters, a friend of Compass’ who paid for the motel room so the family had a place to sleep since the electricity was off at their own home, found the boy dead in bed when he woke shortly before check out time.
Whiters testified Wednesday that he’d worried about Zayden the night before because he was snoring heavily, had been hard to wake up, staggered when he walked and slurred his speech when he asked for drinks.
Compass, however, seemed less concerned and even ran water over the boy’s forehead to help rouse him, he told jurors.
When Whiters asked her for help giving the boy CPR the morning of May 31, Compass refused, he testified, and wanted him to wait on an ambulance instead of rushing Zayden to the hospital in her white Kia Sorento.
Compass got the liquid methadone that killed her son from the Center for Change, an outpatient addiction recovery clinic in Wichita. Usually she went to the clinic in person to take the $9 daily doses of methadone, a powerful synthetic opioid used to slowly wean users off of other narcotics.
But in late May the clinic sent her home with three carefully sealed and labeled bottles of the drug, enough to get her through a long weekend when the clinic was supposed to be closed to move locations, according to testimony given in court.
Compass was supposed to store the methadone bottles in a locked box, out of the reach of children since it can be dangerous and even fatal in large enough doses, Center for Change employee Tevra Vann and medical director Gregory Lakin testified.
Compass was prescribed 60 milligrams of methadone a day. She knew the risks the drug posed to non-addicts from her conversations with clinic staff, from a written intake packet given to her when she joined the program and from warnings written on the methadone bottles, according to testimony.
But the box Compass was using to hold the drugs — a metal-trimmed pencil box stamped with Avengers comic book superheroes — had a keyed lock that apparently didn’t work. Instead of it being left in Compass’ SUV after she checked into the Sunset Motel, at some point it was taken into Room 19 and some of the cherry-flavored drug was poured into a can of Coca-Cola Cherry and a quart-sized bottle of fruit punch “Jungle Juice” that Compass had bought for Zayden from a nearby Walmart.
Her defense attorney during his opening statements Tuesday suggested Compass, whom he painted as a struggling single mother trying to better herself with school and addiction recovery, didn’t know exactly how her son got a hold of the methadone.
When authorities tested the can and juice bottle, they found the drug in both, according to trial testimony.
What remains unclear, though, from trial testimony is exactly when Zayden might have ingested the substance. The boy was lethargic, snoring loudly and largely unresponsive when Whiters saw him in Compass’ SUV before they got to the motel room, suggesting he may have swallowed it long before he laid down in the motel bed. Whiters testified that Compass explained Zayden’s condition that night by saying he was just tired from playing at the park earlier in the day, however.
How Compass treated her son
In a particularly emotional stretch of testimony Wednesday, Zayden’s great-grandmother described how Compass treated him compared to his older sister, who was 3 at the time. Lefors told jurors that Compass loved her daughter and praised her but that she would sometimes be mean to her son.
Once, she said, she saw Compass push Zayden across her living room and call him names.
“(She) told him to get away from her, that he was dumb. He was stupid and that he was retarded,” Lefors testified between sobs.
After shoving the boy, Lefors said she saw Compass coax her 3-year-old daughter into her lap and told her she “was a good girl” and her “best friend.”
Lefors told jurors that in the few weeks before Zayden died, Compass had started asking her to watch her children for short periods so she could run to school for a test or to the store, but that summer would have been the longest stretch of time.
She said that Compass had told her Zayden “was hard for her to handle” because “he wouldn’t mind.”
“I told her (if) she was having such a hard time with Zayden, she could give me Zayden,” Lefors testified.
Even though Lefors had agreed to take in her grandchildren for the summer, she said in court that Compass never called her for help finding a place to stay the night before Zayden died.
Compass didn’t contact Dixon, the family crisis ministry worker, either, according to court testimony.
The trial is scheduled to resume at 11 a.m. Thursday in Sedgwick County District Judge Kevin O’Connor’s courtroom. Jurors this week have already seen crime scene photos and heard testimony from law enforcement employees who investigated the case, as well as from an emergency room doctor who evaluated Zayden but found no health issues after his mother took him to the hospital for what she described as seizure-like activity in the weeks before he died.
Thursday, jurors are expected to hear more from Whiters, the friend who woke up and found Zayden dead, and also from Addie Perkins, the Wichita police detective designated as the lead investigator on the case.
Compass’ defense attorney will also have a chance to present evidence and call witnesses once the state rests.
This story was originally published May 19, 2021 at 9:19 PM.
