Myles Simon never got to open the toys his father bought for him last fall.
Myles was murdered by his baby-sitter's husband, Mohammad Aukif Ahmad, on Sept. 12, 2006. Myles, of Alexandria, was just 21-months- old.
"We're never going to recover, we're never going to recover from losing our son," Myles' mother, Michelle Leete, testified last week in Fairfax County Circuit Court.
A Fairfax jury convicted Ahmad, 25, of Springfield, of second-degree murder Wednesday, May 3, following a three-day trial. The next day, the jury took less than 15 minutes to recommend that Ahmad serve the maximum sentence, 40 years in prison.
"He was such a happy child, I can't imagine what his little self thought to have rage and anger and all those things directed at him," Myles' mother testified. "I just can't think about what he went through, I just can't, I just can't."
Instead, Leete tries to focus on memories of her son's smile and the way he pronounced "Mimmy" when calling her "Mommy."
Myles loved to eat, loved to play with his sister and was always the first one up in the morning. He would play his music box from his crib if he heard no one else stirring, his mother said.
"He was full of life, he had the most infectious giggle. When you heard it, you couldn't help but giggling yourself," she said.
"I loved my son very much," she told the jury, through tears.
"He was the most pleasant child I've ever been around. There's no stranger to Myles, no stranger. He would just smile," said Myles' father, Fredrick Simon.
"I miss that," he said.
Myles' sister, three-years-old when Myles was murdered in their baby-sitter's home, carries a photo of her younger brother with her, even to bed.
"We don't know what she saw, but we know she grieves for her brother," said Myles' mother.
"Devastating," Fredrick Simon said, of the impact Ahmad has had on his family.
NO MURDER is as incomprehensible as a murder of a child, said Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Kathryn S. Swart.
"Why? Why would anybody do this to a little child?" she said, during closing arguments of the three-day trial.
Myles weighed 26.5 pounds and was 33 inches tall when he died from blunt force trauma to his head and abdomen.
"We still search for why this happened," Swart said. "But we sure know how. And we know how Myles lived the last moments of his life."
Myles suffered one blow to the abdomen — possibly from being punched or kicked — that resulted in the laceration of his liver and bruising of his kidneys, colon, bladder and diaphragm. The blow he suffered to his head — possibly from being stomped or being slammed against a hard object — resulted in complex fractures of his skull and instantaneous death, said Dr. Todd Luckasevic, the medical examiner that performed the autopsy.
"Whatever [the defendant] got enraged over, he took it out on Myles," Swart said.
AHMAD'S WIFE, Jillian Ahmad, operated an unlicensed day-care center out of their townhouse on the 6400 block of Silver Ridge Circle in Kingstowne.
The morning of Sept. 12, 2006, Jillian Ahmad left at 9 a.m. for Wal-Mart to get milk, juice and snacks, leaving four children under 4-years-old in the care of her husband.
But Jillian Ahmad first visited a friend before going to Wal-Mart, a friend her husband didn't allow her to call on the phone, she said. Her husband — controlling according to multiple witnesses — called her on her cell phone almost 20 times when she was at her friend's house, testified the friend.
In one of the calls, Mohammad Ahmad told Jillian that Myles was getting tired and sleepy and he was going to put him down to sleep.
During another call he made to her at 10:33 a.m. as she was returning from Wal-Mart, he yelled, "Hurry up and get the hell home," according to Jillian Ahmad's testimony.
When she returned, Myles' eyes were rolled back and his lips were blue, she testified. "I started screaming, 'What happened, what happened?' He said, 'I don't know, he just passed out.'"
She told her husband to call 911.
"He said, 'No, just fix it,'" according to her testimony.
When fire and rescue personnel arrived minutes later, Myles couldn't be saved.
MOHAMMAD AHMAD was arrested at the Westway Motor Inn two miles from LaGuardia International Airport in New York on Sept. 15.
He is scheduled to be formally sentenced by Judge Leslie M. Alden in June.
Before the jury's recommended sentence was announced last Thursday, one juror looked directly to Myles' mother and father and put her hand on her heart.
Michelle Leete cried softly on her husband's shoulder.