Brian Dykstra, 35, formerly of Iowa City, is charged with second-degree murder in his 21-month-old son's 2005 death.
Jurors for the first time this morning heard, in Brian Dykstra’s own words, details about the events that preceded his son’s death on Aug. 14, 2005.
On Aug. 13 – the day 21-month-old Isaac Dykstra was rushed to the hospital with severe head injuries – Brian Dykstra said his son awoke around the same time he always does but was yawning all morning.
“You never think of these things until now,” Dykstra, now 35, told an Iowa City police investigator in a video taped interview taken on Aug. 13, 2005, and played this morning for the 14 jurors hearing his second-degree murder trial in Johnson County.
Dykstra told the detective that Isaac had fallen down two steps three days earlier and hit his head. He said the child suffered a bruise on his cheek and on his ear and a bump on his head that turned “mushy” over the next few days.
He said Isaac was a bit fussier after the fall, but he was mostly himself, according to the videotaped interview. On the morning of Aug. 13, Dykstra told the investigator that his son was just sitting in the hallway, feeling his head and watching TV.
“Normally he was all playing, and he was just sitting there,” Dykstra said. “He just wasn’t his normal self.”
Dykstra said later that day he was in the kitchen washing dishes when he heard Isaac cry, according to the videotaped interview. Dykstra said he found his son lying on the ground, crying “like he bumped his head again” and holding his head.
Dykstra said Isaac appeared to be struggling to breathe, and at one point he “did a little bit of CPR,” according to the interview. When Dykstra tried to look at his son’s bruise, according to the interview, Isaac pushed him away.
Because the child was laboring to breathe, Dykstra said he called 911 but hung up.
“He seemed to be coming out of it,” Dykstra said.
When a 911 operator called back, Dykstra said someone should probable come help.
“I thought, you know what, I don’t trust myself,” he said in the interview. “I want someone here.”
Isaac was pronounced brain dead on Aug. 14 after suffering a hematoma, hemorrhaging, retinal bleeding and brain swelling. Investigators immediately considered the death suspicious, but they didn’t arrest Dykstra until three years later in August 2008.
He has appeared all week with a small group of family members and friends supporting him. He dresses in suits every day and shows little emotion.
His trial is expected to last into next week.
