Jurors in the weeklong shaken baby trial at Schuylkill County Courthouse are expected to begin deliberations Friday morning.
Suspended Pennsylvania State Trooper Christopher Young faces multiple felony charges in the consolidated case, including aggravated assault of a child, endangering the welfare of children, and intimidating a witness. Young is accused of aggressively holding and feeding his infant son on multiple occassions, cauing him to suffer a seizure in 2023, as well as trying to get his wife not to testify before a grand jury as part of the investigation into him.
On Thursday, testimony concluded and lawyers for each side delivered closing arguments inside Courtroom 3 at Schuylkill County Courthouse. This morning, Schuylkill County Judge William Burke is expected to give the jury its charging instructions and send them off to deliberate Young’s fate.
Commonwealth v. Christopher Young: Trial Recap
Prosecutors allege Christopher Young physically abused one of his twin infant sons in September 2023, causing serious brain injuries, and later stalked and intimidated his ex-wife outside her Auburn home in March 2025 while armed with a handgun and a knife.
During the first two days of trial, Young’s ex-wife, Stacey Young, testified that her former husband abused the child and read aloud text exchanges where he appeared to accept responsibility. A prosecution medical expert, Dr. June Elcock-Messam, testified that diagnostic testing at Lehigh Valley Reilly Children’s Hospital supported only one clinical conclusion: abusive head trauma.
Taking the stand Wednesday, Young denied abusing his son and testified that his text admissions were sent solely to “placate” his ex-wife so she would permit him to see his children. Young maintained the infant’s symptoms stemmed from non-abusive medical issues, citing a third opinion from Mt. Sinai Hospital that found no evidence of child abuse.
Young also denied attempting to harm the child in nursery security footage and testified that his presence outside his ex-wife’s home in 2025 was prompted by a crisis call regarding an involuntary mental health commitment order issued for himself.
Jury Will Get Shaken Baby Case Friday Morning
On the final day of testimony in this weeklong trial, Dr. Saadi Ghatan, a neurologist at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, took the stand to explain how he believed the conclusion reached by Lehigh Valley Hospital was wrong.
Ghatan was the second opinion sought by the Youngs after their son had experienced the seizure in 2023. His diagnosis was completely different than that of LVH doctors.
He said that if the Youngs had never gone to Lehigh Valley Hospital, after they weren’t comfortable with the care they’d received the night before at the Geisinger-St. Luke’s Hospital emergency department, their infant son “probably would have been just fine.”
Ghatan also said he was never contacted by investigators with Schuylkill County and Lehigh County Children & Youth, State Police, the Attorney General’s office, or other doctors involved in the case.
On cross-examination, Ghatan told Deputy Attorney General Lauren Eichelberger that if the infant were affected by the chin rubbing on the baby’s soft spot as was shown in a video, a stroke would have occurred, not a seizure.
Closing Arguments
Over the course of four days of testimony, jurors heard conflicting medical opinions about what caused the Youngs infant son to experience a seizure. During his closing argument, defense attorney Jay Nigrini asked jurors to wonder why the Attorney General’s office hadn’t called a doctor from Lehigh Valley Hospital – which determined that the Youngs’ baby was abused.
Instead, Elcock-Messam was the medical expert. She was the child abuse pediatrician consultant who reviewed the findings from LVH testing on the Youngs’ baby.
Nigrini suggested to jurors that the reason LVH doctors weren’t called was because they were no longer of the opinion the baby was the victim of abuse or because the Attorney General’s office “wouldn’t touch them with a 15-foot pole,” in reference to his client’s testimony that pointed out legal issues surrounding alleged misdiagnoses of child abuse.
He said there was doubt not only from his client but also his ex-wife when they, together, sought a second opinion from Ghatan.
“Why should you believe anything that comes from the Lehigh Valley Hospital if Stacey (Young) doesn’t believe it,” Nigrini asked.
He added that the diagnosis from LVH “planted a seed of mistrust” in Stacey Young’s head and that’s why she began questioning her then-husband and accused him of abusing their children. Nigrini said she went into “mama bear” mode.
“She wasn’t going to allow anyone to do that to her children,” he said, but added that despite the belief that her husband could be responsible for hurting their children, she still allowed him to see them.
“This so-called monster is still seeing his children,” Nigrini said.
Regarding the apparent confessions his client made in numerous text messages to his wife, Nigrini said, “Are those true confessions or is it simply a man desperate to see, to hold, to be part of his children’s lives?”
In her final words to the jury, Eichelberger focused on those text messages from Christopher to Stacey and the confessions. She also left jurors with a parting image, showing an enlarged version of the video in which it appears that the defendant is rubbing his chin on the top of his son’s head as he held him in their nursery.
Eichelberger also questioned the credibility, at least in this case, of Ghatan. She said, “He’s the guy they reach out to to refute child abuse.
“It is important that we get the whole story. Dr. Ghatan doesn’t have the whole story,” she told jurors.
She also questioned the defendant’s explanation of his text confessions as him “placating” his wife just to see his children.
“Why would he say that to see the kids more?” Eichelberger asked aloud, suggesting that such texts would only make Stacey Young want to keep him away from her children even more.
And in reference to the nursery video – which Christopher Young admitted to not seeing until days before the start of this week’s trial but in text messages, suggesting whatever was on it would “bury” him – Eichelberger said, “He knew what was in that video because he did it.”
After showing the video to jurors, she said of Stacey Young seeing it, “Then she saw. Then she knew.”
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