Jahree Taylor, 4, has spent his short life battling a rare birth defect. He had a kidney transplant at 2, withstood several other surgeries and has been embraced by the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

        Now the Clifton boy faces a different struggle to stay alive.

        Jahree was critically injured Saturday night when a rock hurled through the window of a van fractured his skull.

        The rock was the climax of a brief chase between his mother's boyfriend, who was driving the van, and two men in an SUV.
       

A mother's hopes
               “Jahree has had more of his share of pain,” said his mother, Rachel Taylor, 32, Sunday at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. “He is going to pull through. He has to. If he died, I would just snap.”

        The boy was listed in critical condition Sunday at Children's Hospital.

        Jahree suffers from Prune Belly Syndrome, also known as Eagle-Barrett Syndrome, a rare congenital defect in which babies are born missing a layer of abdominal muscles. The condition also abnormally dilates the urinary tract.

        As a result, both Jahree's kidneys had to be removed in December 2000, and he received one from his mother. He is mentally delayed and uses a wheelchair.

        Jahree was starting to recover after the transplant and finally learned to walk nine months ago, his mother said. Volunteers with the Make-A-Wish Foundation decorated his bedroom in a racing theme, with a red and black “racing car” bed and “gas pump” chest of drawers.

        The family was featured on the cover of Ohio Make-A-Wish literature in 2000.

        On Saturday, Jahree was in the backseat of Ms. Taylor's boyfriend's van on Reading Road in Bond Hill just before 10 p.m. when a dark-colored SUV zipped by and hurled objects at the van, a police report says.

        The boyfriend, Jerry Keith of Westwood, chased the SUV to a parking lot behind Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits at Reading Road near Seymour Avenue. That was when someone in the SUV threw a 6- to 8-inch rock through the van's middle back window.

        It hit the 3-foot-tall boy on the upper side of his head.

        He underwent surgery early Sunday to remove fluid from his brain, Ms. Taylor said.

        Mr. Keith told police he gave chase to get the vehicle's license plate number.

        “I needed for that person to know they were going to pay for what they did to me and my son,” said Mr. Keith, 42, who considers Jahree a son though he is not the biological father. “I just couldn't swallow that they came at me. They were hoodlums being hoodlums. If it hadn't been us, it would have been someone else.”

        When the vehicles turned into the parking lot behind the chicken restaurant, they circled for a few minutes, Mr. Keith said, as he called 911 on his cell phone to report the incident.

        Finally, the SUV driver pulled to a line of cars waiting in the drive-through line, Mr. Keith said.

        “Then I saw the (SUV's) passenger door open,” Mr. Keith recalled. “And I saw a guy leaning down in the bushes, his arm back and the rock came flying. It hit Jahree and he was just out. Blood gushed out of the side of his head.”

        Mr. Keith told police the men fled north in the SUV on Reading Road. No arrests were made Sunday but police continued investigating. They interviewed Mr. Keith and Ms. Taylor, took pictures of Jahree and collected evidence from Mr. Keith's 1986 blue Dodge Caravan, including the rock that hit Jahree.

        “It's such a shame,” District 4 Police Capt. David Ratliff said. “We prefer people not take this kind of action because of the consequences. You are out of your element, you face a hostile encounter and you wind up losing more than just a small dent to your car.

        “Do I maintain that it's a good thing to get a license number if you can do it safely? Absolutely,” Capt. Ratliff said. “However, the key is to know your limitations.”

        Anyone with information is asked to call District 4 police at (513) 352-3576.

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