Life with parole handed down in toddler’s death

Kim Smith

Tuesday, May 9, 2000 | 11:06 a.m.

A Las Vegas jury took just two hours Monday to decide a man convicted of beating his girlfriend's toddler to death deserves a chance at parole some day.

Kevin Camp, 28, was handed a life sentence Monday with the possibility of parole after 20 years.

Jurors told District Judge Mark Gibbons after the trial that they decided against life without parole because of Camp's lack of a criminal record.

Camp was charged in the January 1998 death of Lamar Brooks Jr., 2. An autopsy revealed the boy died after he was beaten so viciously a kidney was displaced and extensive damage was done to his intestines.

Defense attorneys Dayvid Figler and Alzora Jackson told jurors the boy's mother, Brook Lain, a methamphetamine user and prostitute, beat the boy to death.

However, prosecutors Vicky Monroe and Gerald Gardner argued Camp was alone with the child during the time frame in which medical experts said the injuries had to have occurred.

During the punishment phase of the trial and over the strenuous objections of the defense attorneys, jurors heard testimony from relatives of Kim Navarro, Camp's late wife and mother of two of his sons.

Navarro's mother, cousin and aunt testified about times she called them in tears, saying Camp had beaten and kicked her, including times when she was pregnant.

Jurors were not told Navarro is dead. They were told she was unavailable to testify.

After the trial, Figler asked Gibbons to preclude attorneys from discussing the circumstances surrounding Navarro's death, noting no charges have ever been filed in the case. To discuss it would be unfair to Camp, he said.

Gibbons refused to do so and during their meeting with the attorneys and Gibbons, the jurors learned that Navarro died of an air embolism -- a fatal air bubble in her bloodstream -- a couple of months after she married Camp. She was three months pregnant.

Gardner said doctors aren't sure what caused the embolism, but speculated it could have been caused by a self-induced abortion or by trauma to her abdomen, which was bruised.

Kim Smith covers courts for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 455-4844 or by e-mail at kimberly@lasvegassun.com