Mom recounts dying son's words

As she kept a constant vigil at her two dying sons' bedsides, Nisha Patel said her oldest boy awoke from his coma long enough to identify his father as the one who set him and his brother on fire.

The Glendale Heights mother's harrowing testimony came Friday in an evidentiary hearing to determine if 7-year-old Vishv Patel's statements can be heard in his father's murder trial.

DuPage Circuit Judge Kathryn Creswell will rule Wednesday.

Kaushik J. Patel, 35, may face the death penalty if convicted of killing Vishv and 4-year-old Om after setting them on fire Nov. 18, 2007, in their home.

The boys languished for months in drug-induced comas in the burn unit of Loyola Medical Center in Maywood. Om died Jan. 17, 2008. Vishv survived several surgeries but took a sudden turn for the worse and died Feb. 19, 2008, five weeks after making the alleged statements.

In her first public comments, Nisha Patel was at times tearful during her 30-minute testimony Friday. The mother said she told Vishv on Jan. 12, 2008, that he fell down the stairs to explain his injuries so the boy wouldn't get too upset.

She said he quickly corrected her.

Patel testified her son explained in graphic detail how his father set the boys on fire after bathing them in a gasoline-filled container that he claimed held only water. Patel said Vishv told her his father first took the boys to buy toy cars and, later at a service station, gasoline and candy.

After her son made the statements, Nisha Patel said she immediately notified the police, who came to the hospital the next day, Jan. 13, 2008.

Police had to stand in the doorway because their presence frightened Vishv, but Glendale Heights Detective Charles May said he could see the child and hear the conversation.

Vishv repeated the same story.

"He said when they got into the bath, he knew the liquid in the tub wasn't water like his father told him, that it was gas," May testified. "I remember him specifically saying that when Mr. Patel was pouring the liquid over them that it burned his eyes and his skin."

At issue is Kaushik Patel's constitutional right to confront his accuser. Vishv cannot testify. So, Creswell must find the so-called "hearsay" statements are reliable enough to be admissible based on what the boy's mother and police recall.

The statements were not recorded.

Kaushik Patel is being held on a $10 million cash bond in the DuPage County jail. In a March 2008 jail interview, Patel told the Daily Herald he meant to harm only himself in a botched suicide attempt. He said his sons accidentally were burned when they ran into the bathroom.

Nisha Patel divorced her husband of 10 years last summer.