Lake Station woman may get 10 years in plea deal for son’s death

A Lake Station woman may be sentenced to 10 years after her son died in her fiance’s care, according to an April 22 plea agreement.

Kylie Fugate, 21, pleaded guilty to neglect of a dependent, a level 3 felony. The agreed sentence calls for a 10-year prison term without alternative placement. She would serve another three years on probation.

A judge would need to accept the agreement. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for July 26.

Fugate admitted seeing signs of her son’s past abuse in Joseph Pridemore’s care, but continued to let him watch the boy that day while she was at work. Pridemore was charged with murder Nov. 24.

When she returned, she saw “multiple marks and bruises” on his abdomen, but didn’t take him to the hospital until later when he stopped breathing,

documents show. He had vomited 6-7 times that day.

The boy, Keegan Fugate, 3, died in October of blunt force trauma, according to court records.

The child had a dislocated neck and internal bleeding, a lacerated liver and bruised organs, trauma to his lungs with several bruises from different times on his abdomen, face and head, according to an affidavit.

Pridemore’s next court hearing is June 14. He faces 45-65 years. Her original charge — level 1 felony neglect — carried a possible penalty of 20-40 years.

Gary Police were called Oct. 17 to Methodist Hospitals Northlake campus in Gary after a child died with “suspicious bruising,” according to court documents.

Fugate’s behavior was “a little odd,” police wrote in documents. She appeared stoic when she looked around hospital curtains at her son, but started crying uncontrollably when police looked at her.

She first told police Pridemore’s mother was watching the boy, but later admitted he watched the child in the hours before his death, according to court records. The child was eating a hamburger and seemed fine before she left for work at a gas station around 3 p.m., she said, according to court documents.

By 5:30 p.m., Pridemore texted several times that the child was vomiting several times, and he gave him fluids, broth and Tylenol, documents said.

Pridemore’s relative later told Fugate his mother wouldn’t lie to the police for her.

“Well, I’m screwed then,” she allegedly texted, documents said.

When Fugate got home from her shift hours later, the child was “breathing heavily,” but she didn’t call 911 until overnight when he vomited again and Pridemore said he stopped breathing and she saw the child was turning purple, the affidavit states.

She told detectives that Pridemore said some abrasions were from the dog knocking the child down, or he jumped off the couch. She had been asking him for a few days why there were marks on the boy, but none on her other two children.

Fugate denied the boy was afraid of Pridemore, but said he had kept some distance from him, for example, in a room where the child hugged everyone except him.

Pridemore had a “temper” and “struck her out of anger,” she said. When she was pregnant, she alleged he knocked her into a table, giving her a bloody nose, according to court records.

The child “suddenly stopped breathing” at 4:30 a.m., Fugate later wrote then on an online fundraising page for his funeral expenses. He was “young, smart and full of love,” she wrote.