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November 6, 2009

Johnson held for grand jury in son’s death

Mother also has reported history of abuse with another child

By Carl Keith Greene / Staff Writer

Amanda Johnson’s alleged treatment of her son Stephen Carl Troy was apparently not the first time she had reportedly abused a child.

According to reports from Muskegon County, Michigan assistant prosecutor Brett Gardner, Johnson’s first child was taken from her after she pleaded no contest in 2005 to child abuse for injuring her two-year-old son.

He told reporters the boy had sustained a spiral fracture to his arm. Parental rights were terminated for her and the boy’s father, Michael Troy.

Rights to a second child were also terminated when the county’s child protective services took the child directly from the hospital after his birth.

The pair reportedly left for Kentucky in September 2007, a month before Stephen’s birth.

Johnson, 21, was held over for the Laurel grand jury after a pre-trial hearing in Laurel District Court.

Johnson had been charged with murder in the death of her third child, 23-month-old Stephen on Oct. 23.

According to testimony in the hearing, Stephen was dead on arrival at St. Joseph hospital in London.

Kentucky State Police Detective Mark Allen testified that the child died of blunt force trauma to the abdomen. Allen said he had interviewed Johnson and her live-in boyfriend Will Callahan over the next few days and in those interviews, Allen said, Callahan had reported seeing Johnson throw the baby and punch the child in the back.

Stephen’s father, Michael Troy, had earlier reported a fist-sized bruise on the child’s back.

Callahan told Allen that on the morning of the incident, Stephen was crying and Johnson had told him that it was perhaps because the child didn’t want her to leave for work.

An autopsy revealed that Stephen had died as the result of the rupture of arteries to his small intestine and internal bleeding.

Along with the murder charge came charges of criminal abuse.

Johnson is in the Laurel County jail under a $250,000 bond.

Indictments are set to be returned on Nov. 20.

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