Man ‘detached’ as son died: Witnesses

right:IOWA CITY - With his 21-month-old son lying unresponsive in a hospital bed and clinging to life with the help of a respirator, Brian Dykstra looked at his child's bedside nurse and asked her what happened.

“Brian was sitting in a chair, and he looked at me, and locked eyes, and said, ‘Jen, tell me how something like this can happen?'” Jennifer Evans told jurors Tuesday during Dykstra's second-degree murder trial in connection with the death of his son, Isaac, on Aug. 14, 2005.

Evans, a former registered nurse for University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, testified that she told Dykstra that only blunt force trauma - like being in a car accident - could cause injuries of that magnitude.

“He didn't respond to that,” Evans said.

Isaac died of severe head trauma the day after he was rushed to the hospital following a 911 hang-up call from his father. Investigators said Dykstra's explanation of what happened didn't match the toddler's head injuries and bruising.

Evans said the boy's mother, Lisa Dykstra, was “fully grieving.”

“She was dry heaving - almost catatonic,” she said. “She was vomiting and crying.”

Brian, on the other hand, “said very little,” according to Evans.

“For the most part, he appeared very detached,” she said.

Other nurses, doctors and law enforcement officers also told jurors that Dykstra seemed withdrawn as his son was dying. But the witnesses also conceded that parents grieve differently.

“It's not fair to say that what Brian Dykstra exhibited that day was out of the ordinary,” said UI Hospitals nurse Stephanie Jacobson.

Judy Stark, a medical social worker for UI Hospitals, told jurors that she was asking Brian and Lisa Dykstra about their son's medical history, and they both mentioned a fall down two steps a few days earlier.

She said they disagreed about a hematoma that doctors had found on Isaac's head and that Dykstra said was there days earlier.

At the crime scene, officers testified, Dykstra appeared to be nervous when they found his son lying in the living room with severe injuries.

“But he was not in distress,” said Tom Lacina, who has been with the Iowa City Fire Department for 23 years.

Firefighter Paul Suedkamp said he also found Dykstra to be emotionless, but not in shock. And he didn't try to approach his son.

“I would describe him as unconcerned,” he said. “He was farther away than I would expect a person to be from their child at an emergency scene.”