Grandfather urges Independence officials to press charges after infant arrived at hospital with severe injuries

Beau Kirchhoff, a nonresident who identified himself as the child’s grandfather, urged the Independence City Council to act after his grandson was admitted to Children’s Mercy with life-threatening injuries in June 2024.

Kirchhoff presented what he said were medical reports, police body-camera footage and Department of Family Services findings and said medical staff concluded the injuries were intentional. “There’s over 5,000 pages of medical records with the words intentional abuse written all over him,” Kirchhoff said during the public-comment period.

The nut graf: Kirchhoff asked elected officials to press criminal charges and to respond to repeated attempts by the family to get information from the detective assigned to the case. He said the family has not received a case update and that no charges had been filed in the roughly year since the infant’s hospitalization.

In his remarks, Kirchhoff described injuries documented in medical scans, including multiple broken ribs in different stages of healing and a fractured skull, and said specialists later diagnosed the child with cerebral palsy from blunt-force trauma. He said paramedics found the infant unresponsive and that body-camera footage shows the mother behaving in ways he described as inconsistent with the account she had given police about the child’s injuries. “Medical reports clearly state the abuse was intentional and could not have been accidental,” Kirchhoff said.

Kirchhoff told council members the family had provided evidence — including body-camera footage and a witness video allegedly showing the mother’s boyfriend admitting to an assault — to police and other prosecutors but had not received a response. He said a witness who delivered a video to the police station on a Saturday was turned away and later reported being threatened with losing housing if she cooperated.

The transcript indicates the statements were made during the council’s public-comment period; no motion, referral or formal direction to staff was recorded on the council floor in response to the comments. Council members and staff did not announce any specific investigative action at the meeting.

Ending: The speaker said he would remain available after the meeting for follow-up and that the family had pursued outside prosecutors and local police jurisdictions for guidance. Council members did not make a public commitment during the meeting to initiate an independent review or request an outside agency investigation.