When Tennessee police stopped murder suspect Christopher Gregor two days after his son died, he called the child’s mother “a special kind of dirt bag” and said the child would still be alive if she weren’t a drug addict.
Last week, a portion of police body-camera footage was played in the Ocean City Superior Court in New Jersey, where 31-year-old Gregor is on trial for the murder of 6-year-old Corey Micciolo.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Corey, who was just a few weeks shy of his seventh birthday, died in April 2021 from “blunt force injuries with cardiac and liver contusions with acute inflammation and sepsis,” according to an autopsy report.
Following his death, Gregor fled town. The stop in Tennessee happened in June 2021, a year before his arrest in March 2022 arrest for murder. The court was shown the footage at the request of Gregor’s defense team to demonstrate his client’s cooperation during the traffic stop, agreeing to a car search.
During the search, Gregor told the officers that his son had recently died from possible “internal bleeding” while blaming the victim’s mother, Breanna Micciolo.
“If he didn’t have a drug-addicted mother, then he’d still be alive,” Gregor said, adding that Breanna was a “special kind of dirt bag.”
Earlier this month, Breanna testified and acknowledged a past drug addiction that she sought treatment for, resulting in the restoration of her visitation rights. She also admitted that on the same day her son died, but before she learned of his death, she texted a boyfriend, asking him to get her meth.
Micciolo said she did not do drugs that day.
“But you wanted to?” Gregor’s defense attorney, Mario Gallucci, asked.
“Oh, yeah, I was very upset about my son being abused,” she said.
She has not been charged in connection with her son’s death.
During the traffic stop, one Alcoa police officer suggested Gregor might have been trying to flee to Mexico.
“Were you trying to cross the border?” the officer asked.
Police eventually released Gregor but took his car and cell phone as evidence. Gregor’s father, David Gregor, testified that he arranged for his son to rent a car to drive back to New Jersey.
Gregor wasn’t charged until July 2021, initially with endangering the welfare of a child. The charge stemmed from a March 20, 2021, incident where surveillance video from his apartment complex gym showed Gregor speeding up a treadmill while forcing Corey to run on it, causing the child to fall face-first off the machine repeatedly.
In September 2021, a forensic pathologist concluded that Corey’s death was a homicide, attributing it to enduring chronic abuse. This included blunt force injuries to his chest and abdomen, along with a laceration on his heart, a left pulmonary contusion, and liver lacerations and contusions.
Breanna previously told CrimeOnline that although there were numerous warning signs of abuse, she felt the Department of Protection and Permanency didn’t do enough to help, despite her making child abuse reports.
Micciolo began taking photos of her son after she suspected something was wrong. She said she tried to get the judge to allow her full custody of her son in April 2021, but it didn’t happen in time.
Gregor has pleaded not guilty. Check back for updates.
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[Feature Photo: Corey Micciolo/GoFundMe]
