Hillsboro parents sentenced in child endangering case
A Hillsboro man and woman were both sentenced to prison Thursday after pleading guilty to child endangering charges.
Joey Dixon, 23, and Reece Fist, 21, were charged in May in a secret indictment handed down by a Highland County grand jury. Both were indicted on six counts of endangering children — three second-degree and three third-degree felonies.
Dixon pleaded guilty to two third-degree felony counts of child endangering, and Fist pleaded guilty to one third-degree felony count, on Aug. 23.
The indictment accused the parents of four counts of child endangering against one minor victim in 2022, including abuse and/or “creating a substantial risk to the health or safety” of the child, resulting in “serious physical harm.” Two charges cited injuries to the child’s femur, and two cited injuries to the child’s wrist.
The indictment also charged the couple with two counts of abuse involving a second child victim suffering clavicle injuries, during a several-month time period in 2022.
The Highland County Press previously reported in March 2023 that Highland County Juvenile Court Judge Kevin Greer ordered the children to remain in the custody of Highland County Children Services for up to one year. The children had been in the agency’s custody since October 2022, after Cincinnati Children’s Hospital reported the children had injuries consistent with non-accidental trauma.
Last October, the Children Services agency received a report that one of the children was transferred to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital after an area hospital determined the child had a fractured left femur. While at Children’s Hospital, the child was also found to have a healing left radial fracture.
A bone scan was then done on the second child, who was found to have a healing clavicle fracture. “Due to fractures in different stages of healing, the multitude of bruises on both children and no known mechanism of injury, the hospital considered the injuries to be highly suspect for abuse (non-accidental trauma),” according to the facts of that case.
During a sentencing hearing Thursday afternoon in Highland County Common Pleas Court, Judge Rocky Coss sentenced Dixon to 24 months on each count, to run consecutively, for a total of four years in prison. He had jail time credit of two days.
“I don’t know what your problem is, but it’s significant, because you committed these crimes against your own twins,” Coss told Dixon (who declined to speak before sentencing). “Significant injuries, and to make it worse, you lied about it. It wasn’t until after you took a polygraph and failed that you admitted your guilt. You’ve denied it all the way through.
“This is a situation where clearly, you need to be held accountable, because you refused to do that yourself, and you had a duty of protection to these children. Not only have you violated that, but you inflicted some significant injuries upon them.”
In a subsequent sentencing hearing Thursday, Coss sentenced Fist to a definite determinate term of 24 months, with jail time credit of four days.
“I love my [children], and I never intended to commit any crime like this against them, although I have admitted to my faults in part of this case,” Fist said before sentencing. “The only thing that I could ever ask for is just the chance to see them.”
Highland County Assistant Prosecutor Adam King told the judge that “the state’s position is that she was aware of these injuries and failed to act timely and appropriately.”
“The injuries that these children suffered, and this child particularly that you’ve admitted to being aware of and not preventing, is serious,” Coss said to Fist. “But you have been more cooperative, and I guess more truthful, than the co-defendant.”