Christopher Gregor, the New Jersey dad accused of killing his 6-year-old son by forcing him to endure a grueling treadmill workout, was seen carrying the boy’s limp body into a hospital shortly before he died.
Harrowing video played during Gregor’s trial showed him carrying Corey Micciolo’s tiny, battered body as he approached the front desk at Southern Ocean Medical Center on April 2, 2021.
Corey barely moved as he slumped in his dad’s arms — and took “dire, almost end-of-life breaths,” according to court testimony from William Doyle, a registered nurse on duty at the time.
The boy “was not showing any signs that he was verbal,” his head tilting backward as he was brought into an examination room, Doyle said in court, according to the Asbury Park Press.
“He was an all-hands-on-deck situation,” Doyle told the jurors.
The injuries were so severe that Corey suffered a seizure during a CT scan, forcing medical staff to take emergency measures in a doomed attempt to save his life. However, they were unsuccessful, and he was pronounced dead shortly before 5 p.m.
An initial autopsy found Corey died as a result of blunt force injuries with cardiac and liver contusions with acute inflammation and sepsis.
Two weeks earlier, surveillance video showed Gregor, 31, putting his son through a sickening workout at the Atlantic Heights Clubhouse fitness center — allegedly because he thought his son was too fat.
He put Corey on the treadmill and rapidly increased the speed and the incline until the boy flew off.
Gregor is seen picking him up and putting him back on the belt — as he seemingly clamped his teeth onto Corey’s head — but the child falls another half-dozen times and desperately struggles to keep up until his dad eventually lowers the speed.
Testifying at the trial at Ocean County Superior Court, Corey’s mother, Breanna Micciolo — who was in a custody dispute with Gregor — said she later noticed “odd-shaped” bruises on her son.
She said she took him to a pediatrician, who found no real cause for concern — although the boy revealed the nature of the alleged abuse to the doctor.
The day he died at the hospital, Corey had woken up from a nap nauseated, stumbling around and slurring his words.
Gregor, of Barnegat, NJ, was arrested three months later and charged with child neglect, based in part on the disturbing video.
A forensic pathologist determined in September 2021 that the youngster’s death was a homicide due to chronic child abuse, including blunt force injuries to his chest and abdomen and a laceration to his heart.
Gregor was arrested on murder charges connected to Corey’s death on March 9, 2022.
The dad turned down a 30-year plea offer and now faces life in prison if convicted.
From honor student to accused killer
There had been troubling warning signs from the very first time Gregor — a former high school honor student, football star and youth mentor — met Corey in 2019, when the boy was just 5 years old.
Corey returned home to Micciolo that day with a “busted lip,” which Gregor said happened when he accidentally kicked the youngster while playing soccer, Jersey Shore Online reported.
Micciolo reportedly filed several reports to NJ Child Protective Services during the brief period Gregor spent time with the boy. Tragically, she even said she once mentioned she was suspicious that he was using the treadmill to punish him, the outlet wrote.
The grieving mom said she “begged” child protective services to “get him away from his abuser” but that “no one listened or helped,” she wrote on the Change.org petition she started after Corey’s death.
Micciolo said a judge denied her request for full custody the day before he died. It was not immediately clear how or when she and Gregor met.
Gregor, who attended Monroe Township High School, was an honor student and all-state defensive lineman who played for its 2009 Group III state championship football team, according to an archival capture of a since-deleted page its website.
That same year, he was part of the district’s “Heroes and Cool Kids” mentorship program for middle schoolers, reserved for high school students “considered positive role models by their administrators,” according to a 2010 report by the Home News Tribune community newspaper.
Gregor briefly attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., where he was arrested in November 2010 for allegedly stealing from a female dorm resident’s room and drunkenly assaulting two male students who tried to stop him as he fled, the Middletown Press wrote at the time.
He received a bachelor of arts in psychology at the University of Arizona, an online school formerly called Ashford University, and earned his master’s in secondary education and teaching from Johns Hopkins University School of Education, according to his LinkedIn.
Gregor then job-hopped across Florida, New Jersey and Maryland, working brief stints as a crisis hotline counselor, realtor, math teacher and sales associate for the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning.
His current position lists him as a real estate agent at Red Door Real Estate in New Jersey, where he allegedly has worked since February 2018.
Gregor racked up more than half a dozen criminal charges in Baltimore between August 2017 and April 2018, including assault, robbery and destruction of property, public records show. His LinkedIn indicates he was a math teacher at Urban Teachers in Baltimore at the time.
