The Porter County Sheriff’s Police is investigating the death of a 6-month-old Chesterton area boy following a ruling of homicide by the Cook County, Ill., Medical Examiner.

Nicholas B. Munden was pronounced dead at 4:26 p.m. on Monday at the University of Chicago Hospital. Police said that the boy had been airlifted there on Friday, Sept. 19, for “treatment of an unknown medical condition,” after Porter hospital EMS personnel and PCSP officers responded to a report of an unconscious infant at a Liberty Township residence.

On Tuesday the PCSP was notified of the boy’s death and of an autopsy scheduled for Wednesday, police said. The Cook County Medical Examiner subsequently conducted that autopsy and ruled the manner of the boy’s death homicide, police said.

A spokesman for the Cook County Medical Examiner told the Chesterton Tribune today that the boy had sustained a subdural hematoma—or bleeding of the brain—and died of “blunt head trauma” associated with “child abuse.”

The spokesman also said that the boy’s babysitter had found him lying unconscious on his belly and contacted EMS personnel. The boy was then transported from the babysitter’s to Porter Valparaiso Hospital Campus and later airlifted to the University of Chicago Hospital.

An obituary appeared in Wednesday’s edition of the Tribune.

Posted 10/2/2008