A North Laurel man was convicted of first-degree child abuse and other counts in Howard County Circuit Court Monday for severely burning a two-year-old child in a tub of scalding hot water in October 2008.

Michael Adegoke Oyeadeniran, 38, was convicted of first- and second-degree child abuse, and second-degree assault in the case, according to Wayne Kirwan, a spokesman for Howard County State’s Attorney Dario Broccolino.

Prosecutors claimed Oyeadeniran maliciously placed the girl, his niece, in a bathtub filled with water that reached 164 degrees, creating severe burns over a quarter of her body. He then twice left the girl alone in the apartment when he went out to buy items at two different stores and waited about five hours before getting the girl to the hospital, prosecutors said.

Pointing at a picture of the severely burned legs of the child in Howard County Circuit Court during closing arguments Monday, Assistant State’s Attorney Susan Weinstein urged jurors to find Oyeadeniran guilty. “She was a beautiful, healthy two-year-old, but when she went into the hospital just before midnight she looked like this,” Weinstein said gesturing at the picture of the burned legs.

Defense attorneys had argued that the girl burned in bathtub while in Oyeadeniran’s care was the victim of a terrible accident. Mary Pizzo, Oyeadeniran’s attorney, noted that character witnesses said Oyeadeniran was a kind, generous, church-going man and that the mother of the injured child held no grudge against him.

“Pictures do tell a lot but they don’t tell the whole story,” she said. Pizzo admitted that Oyeadeniran made a mistake in leaving the child unattended while he went to the pharmacy to buy ointment for her wounds, and also said that he should have called the hospital earlier. But, she said, these were not the actions of a guilty man.

“Did he use good judgment in how he managed the situation afterwards? No,” she said. But, she added, “sometimes we hold out hope that’s unreasonable in certain circumstances.”

Pizzo also said that in the six months prior to the incident in which the child had been living with Oyeadeniran, there had been no evidence of child abuse. Moreover, she said police did not talk to the child after the burning.

But Weinstein urged the jury to think of the child. “These scars are never going to go away,” she said.

Public defenders Pizzo and Janette DeBoissiere, who also represented Oyeadeniran, declined to comment on the verdict.

Assistant State’s Attorney Lisa Broten, who helped prosecute the case, said she and Weinstein had found the case emotionally challenging and said the photographs of the burned toddler were among the most horrific she'd ever seen.

“Obviously it’s a tragic event for everyone involved . At the end of the day it’s a very sad thing for this family,” she said.

She said she was pleased with the verdict and credited Howard County police for their investigation.

She also said the case shows how far the county has come in prosecuting domestic violence.

“A couple of decades ago this would have been something that would have been kept inside the family,” she said adding that the case “shows that people are willing to open their eyes to this kind of horrific behavior.”

Oyeadeniran faces up to 25 years in prison, according to Kirwan.

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