'Guardian angel' Lemar Martin guilty of allowing tot slay

BY Scott Shifrel
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, January 28th 2010, 4:00 AM

A city housing guard who claimed he was a 3-year-old boy's "guardian angel" was convicted of murder Wednesday for doing nothing as his girlfriend beat the child to death.

Lemar Martin, 27, now faces a life sentence and will serve more time than his girlfriend, Nymeen Cheatham, who pleaded guilty in exchange for a 20-year sentence.

"He tried to call himself Kyle's guardian angel and yet he did nothing," Kyle's father, Elliot Smith, said after the verdict, wiping tears from his eyes.

"I really don't know what to say. I'm gratified for it.

"I just wish there was some way of giving her more time than 20 years. But I'll take whatever they give me right now."

Cheatham, 32, who admitted battering the 28-pound boy for misbehaving after the funeral of a cousin, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter.

She and Martin had been caring for Kyle for several months while his mother, a drug addict, sought treatment.

Prosecutors said Martin set the fatal beating in motion when he made Kyle do pushups and jumping jacks and then "popped him on the arm" for acting out.

His defense was that he slept through the thrashing.

"The man sleeps the sleep of the dead," defense lawyer William Martin told jurors at the beginning of the Brooklyn Supreme Court trial.

Martin took the stand and said he "loved" Kyle as if he were his own son.

"I just thought I was being a guardian angel like my stepfather was for me when I was 8 years old," he told jurors.

But jurors, who saw gruesome pictures of Kyle's body almost completely covered in black and blue, didn't believe anyone could sleep through such a horror.

"It was hard to even look at those pictures," said one woman. "We were very sure. Justice was done."

From: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/01/28/2010-01-28_guardian_angel_guilty_of_allowing_tot_slay.html