Funeral services scheduled for toddler; mom faces murder charges

DAYTON — Funeral arrangements have been made for the 2-year-old boy who died after his mother told police that he fell down the stairs of his townhouse home at 5091 Norris Drive.

Services for Tyyuan Nicholson Jr. will be 1 p.m. Thursday at the House of Wheat Funeral Home, Inc., 2107 N. Gettysburg Ave., according to his obituary in the Dayton Daily News. Visitation is scheduled for 10 a.m. prior to the funeral service.

Nicholson died June 16 after being on life support at Children’s Medical Center of Dayton. The Montgomery County Coroner’s Office said the toddler died of non-accidental trauma and not from any injuries he could have received from a fall down a flight of apartment stairs.

Montgomery prosecutors approved two murder charges and four child endangering charges — three of them felonies — against the toddler’s mother, Asia Morris, 21, of Dayton.

Morris called 911 around 6:30 p.m. June 14 and told a dispatcher that her son fell down some steps at their Norris Drive townhouse, inside the Eagle Ridge Apartment complex. She told the dispatcher that the toddler cracked his head open on a table, was unconscious and not breathing.

For nearly nine minutes the 911 dispatcher walked Morris through CPR, counting the 30 chest compressions and two mouth-to-mouth breaths, repeating the instructions as Morris frantically attempted to revive the toddler. On the 911 tape, the dispatcher is heard praising Morris for her efforts to revive the toddler just as the first responders start questioning the mother about what really happened to the child.

Last week, Dayton Police Sgt. Dan Mauch said both Morris and the child’s father, Tyyuan Nicholson Sr., were cooperating with the investigation. Mauch also said last week that Nicholson Sr. was in and out of the apartment when the incident occurred.

The two murder charges are based on child endangering by abuse and child endangering by corporal punishment. The child endangering counts include lack of care, lack of care leading to serious physical harm, corporal punishment causing serious physical harm and abuse causing serious physical harm, according to Greg Flannagan, spokesman for the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office.

Besides his parents, the toddler is survived by his baby sister Cameal Nicholson and other relatives.