Witness: Couple appeared happy after toddler’s death

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — A couple accused of beating to death the woman’s 2-year-old girl appeared playful and happy at a picnic less than two weeks after the toddler’s death, a witness testified Friday in the mother’s trial.

Prosecutors planned to wrap up their case Friday against Kimberly Dawn Trenor, who’s charged with capital murder in the death of Riley Ann Sawyers.

They have argued that Trenor and Royce Clyde Zeigler II are both responsible for Riley’s death. Prosecutors have said the couple beat the girl, dunked her head in cold bath water and ultimately threw her onto a tile floor, fracturing her skull during a daylong discipline session July 25, 2007. Zeigler, who will be tried later, is also charged with capital murder.

Trenor and Zeigler met playing an online video game and married in June 2007 after Trenor moved with her daughter from Mentor, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, to Spring, a suburb north of Houston. Riley died the next month.

Angelica Zenon, who worked with Zeigler in a suburban Houston office, testified Friday that Trenor and Zeigler seemed happy and playful at Emerson Process Management’s company picnic Aug. 4, 2007.

“At any time, did these two people look like they were mourning the loss of a 2-year-old child?” prosecutor Kayla Allen asked.

“No,” Zenon answered.