Brain Damage

A sucker punch thrown in a Burger King crumpled Robert Crookham's 140-pound frame and forever changed his life. Two months ago, Crookham was cruising in his 1978 Firebird, telling jokes, making dreams and winding up a 10-5-1 wrestling season for Neshaminy High School in Bucks County. He was 17 years old, the final days of adolescence were ticking past, and he set his sights on becoming an apprentice in the Philadelphia Plumbers Union. That's all changed. Dreams are made, then betrayed.

A Skippack Township woman was charged yesterday with having repeatedly shaken her son, now 6 months old, allegedly causing him to suffer severe and permanent brain damage. Jamie Amodeo, 29, was indicted in Montgomery County on counts of aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and endangering the welfare of children. She was released yesterday after being arraigned before District Justice Benjamin R. Crahalla. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 12. Her attorney said he had no comment.

A $1,000 reward was posted yesterday for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the October shooting that left a 3-year-old Camden girl severely brain damaged. Yahnajeah "Yaya" Kirkland was in the backseat of a Ford Escape on Oct. 28 when shots were fired from a corner of Eighth Street and Ferry Avenue in the Centerville section of Camden. A bullet pierced a door and a window of the SUV and entered Yaya's head just below and behind her left ear. Last month, doctors told her family that Yaya, once bubbly and talkative, had severe brain damage and might not speak or walk again.

During her brief life, Aniyah Cheryl Giles endured her share of physical abuse. When she was three months old, doctors found two fractured ribs and a bruised arm, authorities said. On Tuesday afternoon, the six-month-old made her final trip to the hospital. She died the next day of head injuries consistent with Shaken Baby Syndrome. Yesterday, the child's father was arraigned before Superior Court Judge David Eynon on murder charges. Vance Tyrone Green, 21, of the Regent Court Apartments in Runnemede, was being held in Camden County jail on $150,000 cash bail in his infant daughter's slaying.

By the time Eddie Polec's accused killers were finished beating him, the back of his brain had swollen so much it cut off the flow of blood to his heart and lungs. A brain specialist took the witness stand yesterday and described in clinical detail the severe damage inflicted on the Fox Chase youth's brain by his basball-bat-wielding assailants. "They intended that he die," said prosecutor Joseph Casey outside the courtroom after several hours of the doctor's testimony. "The brain itself, the severe trauma to it are the best evidence of that.

Four young Haddon Township men have been indicted by a Camden County grand jury in the beating of a Pennsauken High School senior, authorities said yesterday. Bret Wilson, 18, suffered brain damage after he was beaten and stomped Nov. 2 during a brawl that involved as many as 40 young people at Newton Lake Park in Collingswood. Charged by the grand jury with aggravated assault were Dominic J. Latella, 17, Zachary C. Albino, 18, Matthew R. Leiter, 19, and Thomas W. McKeown Jr., 17, Camden County Prosecutor Vincent P. Sarubbi said.

A 5-year-old girl who suffered brain damage after falling into the deep end of a swimming pool two years ago was awarded $24 million by a jury yesterday, an amount said to be the state's largest personal injury award in memory. Destine Weightman has been in a "persistent vegetative state" since she sank into the 9-foot-deep end of a swimming pool at a 350-unit apartment complex in Upper Darby, said the family's lawyer, Shanin Specter. She cannot see, walk, feed herself, or move any part of her body.

A 7-year-old Oregon boy left blind and unable to speak or walk after a heart operation six years ago won a $15.2 million judgment yesterday against Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, his surgeon and a technician who assisted. Alec Sears was born in a Portland suburb with a heart defect. Mark and Vicki Sears brought their son to Children's Hospital for a series of heart operations when he was one week old, six months old and 13 months old. The procedure had been pioneered at Children's Hospital, although by 1993 the surgery was being performed at medical centers around the country.

For years, Philadelphia police officers have been sued by people they arrested. Now, a federal appeals court says that they and police throughout the region can be sued by people they did not arrest. In a ruling that creates new grounds for civil-rights suits against police departments, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has revived a lawsuit by the parents of a Philadelphia woman who passed out on a frigid night and suffered severe brain damage after police stopped her for drunkenness and then let her walk home alone.

Danny Centrone, 38, who suffered permanent brain damage as a teenager when members of the Warlocks motorcycle gang beat him unconscious with chains in a shopping center parking lot in 1972, died Saturday at his home in Folcroft. "Danny has been a prisoner in his own body ever since his beating," said his mother, Greta Centrone. "The Danny that we've had around for 21 years was not my son. "Danny's where he should be - at peace," she said. She found her son unconscious on the bathroom floor Saturday night.