Mar 19, 2022 4 min read

Caitlin Riffle suspected the father of her infant boy killed their son after watching his demeanor at the hospital while the child was being treated for severe head injuries.

Six-month-old Oliver George had been left alone in the care of his father, Joshua Wayne George, at their Smith Township home for less than two hours Dec. 30 when the boy started acting strange after being taken to his grandparents for babysitting later that morning.

Soon, Oliver began suffering seizures while in an ambulance on the way to Weirton (W.Va.) Medical Center, and he later was flown by helicopter to UPMC Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he died Jan. 3.

“I had my suspicions he did it with the way he was acting at the hospital,” Riffle testified during George’s preliminary hearing Friday morning in connection with Oliver’s death.

Senior District Judge Larry Hopkins ordered George, 30, to stand trial on all charges, including homicide, child endangerment and three counts of aggravated assault following a lengthy preliminary hearing in Washington County Central Court. The hearing was filled with emotional testimony that included photographs of Oliver’s bruised face surrounded in bandages and medical equipment while doctors tried to save his life.

Dr. Adelaide Eichman, a pediatrician at Children’s, testified Oliver suffered a skull fracture, hemorrhaging and bruising “consistent with shaking, accelerating, decelerating” along with blunt force trauma to his head. She testified that the injuries the child suffered could not have come from an accidental fall or a child’s carelessness.

“Oliver would’ve experience pain. He would not have been acting normally after suffering these injuries,” Eichman said. “The baby, through his own actions, could not have caused a constellation of these injuries. … This would have hurt the baby a lot.”

While it’s unclear when exactly Oliver suffered the injuries, Riffle testified that the boy was acting normally when she awoke the morning of Dec. 30. She fed the boy a bottle and then left their Francis Road home for work around 6:30 a.m. after trying to wake George, who was sleeping on a living room couch next to a playpen where Oliver was located.

“He was fine,” Riffle said of Oliver’s condition when she left.

About two hours later, George then took Oliver and two other children to their grandparents, who were planning to watch the kids while both parents worked. George arrived about 8:30 a.m. and immediately left, Cheska Rotellini testified. She noticed Oliver appeared to be sleeping while making whining noises, but things started to change in the two hours in which she was watching him.

“Usually he’s happy, smiling, cooing,” Rotellini said. “He wasn’t himself.”

She didn’t notice any serious problems at first until Oliver refused to eat and later vomited. Then bruising began to appear as his left ear turned purple. She talked to Riffle in a video chat and then called 911 for an ambulance as Oliver’s condition worsened.

“I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on,” she said.

District Attorney Jason Walsh tried to show that no other people but George would have had the opportunity to harm Oliver and that his injuries were not caused by an accident. One witness Walsh called also indicated George made a comment that he was thinking about harming the baby the night before the boy was injured.

Michael Welch, who is Riffle’s uncle, said he was helping George replace a transmission on his vehicle Dec. 29 when he heard the father make an astonishing statement. George told Welch that Oliver was “giving him a hard time” and not sleeping through the night.

“He told me he looked at (Oliver) and told him he was going to shake him,” Welch recalled George saying to him.

“I said, ‘Josh, what the heck?’ But Josh says off the wall things,” Welch testified. “I was taken aback a bit.”

Welch also testified that George appeared concerned at the hospital about what might happen to him as Oliver’s condition deteriorated and he was later declared brain dead.

“He said he felt like this was gong to fall back on him,” Welch said of George’s reaction at the hospital.

George was emotionless during the hearing as he appeared through video conferencing from the Washington County jail.

Smith Township police arrested George on Feb. 25 after investigators determined Oliver died of blunt force trauma and his death was ruled a homicide. George is jailed without bond while he awaits his formal arraignment at 9 a.m. April 28.