EDITOR'S NOTE: The details of this case are graphic and may be upsetting for some readers.
For the second time in less than a week, A Chester county community gathered to remember a 3-year-old boy who was beaten to death by his mother and her boyfriend, according to prosecutors.
Scotty McMillan died Nov. 4 after a series of beatings inside a West Caln township trailer home, according to Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan.
“Let me tell you about an American horror story,” Hogan said last week while announcing first-degree murder charges against Scotty’s mother Jillian Tait and her boyfriend Gary Fellenbaum.
“Over a three-day period… (Scotty) was systematically tortured and beaten to death,” said Hogan. “He was punched in the face and in the stomach, he was scourged with a homemade whip, he was lashed with a metal rod, he was tied to a chair and beaten, he was tied upside down by his feet and beaten, his head was smashed through a wall and at the end of that he had bruises on top of bruises all over his body.”
Hogan said Fellenbaum, 23, used items including a makeshift whip, a curtain rod and an aluminum strip on Scotty while Tait, 31, admittedly sometimes watched and laughed. Fellenbaum also slammed Scotty and his 6-year-old brother’s heads into the wall, said Hogan.
Police alleged that Fellenbaum met Tait at a local Wal-Mart where they worked together. Tait and her two sons — Scotty and the 6-year-old — moved in with Fellenbaum in mid-October and the abuse began shortly thereafter, said investigators.
As Tait, Fellenbaum and Fellenbaum’s estranged wife Amber Fellenbaum – who authorities charged with reckless endangerment and child endangerment – remained behind bars Wednesday, the community panned to gather to remember Scotty.
On Wednesday around 6 p.m., more than 100 people gathered at Abdala Community Park at 8th Street and Lincoln Highway in Coatesville for a prayer service and vigil led by Elder Charles Anthony Ward.
Local
Breaking news and the stories that matter to your neighborhood.
The prayer vigil came on the heels of last week’s vigil held in memory or Scotty and a local woman who died in a murder-suicide outside the Brandywine YMCA.
Fellenbaum expressed remorse that "his physical assaults caused another's death," according to a criminal complaint obtained by NBC10.
County services took in Tait’s 6-year-old as well as the Fellenbaums' 11-month-old daughter.
