Christopher Gregor, the New Jersey father accused of killing his 6-year-old son Corey Micciolo by forcing him onto a treadmill at high speeds, is a former high school football star and youth mentor who met the boy for the first time barely a year before he allegedly abused him to death.
There were troubling warning signs from the very first time Gregor met Corey in 2019, when the youngster was just 5 years old.
Corey returned home to his mother, Breanna Micciolo, that day with a “busted lip,” which Gregor said happened when he accidentally kicked the youngster while playing soccer, Jersey Shore Online reported.
Fearing he was abusing Corey, Micciolo reportedly filed several reports to NJ Child Protective Services during the brief period Gregor was spending time with the child. Tragically, she even said she once mentioned she was suspicious that he was using the treadmill to punish him, the outlet wrote.
The grieving mom said she “begged” child protective services to “get him away from his abuser” but that “no one listened or helped,” she wrote on the Change.org petition she started after Corey’s death.
The day before he died, Micciolo said a judge denied her request for full custody. It was not immediately clear how or when she and Gregor met.
Gregor, who attended Monroe Township High School, was an honor student and all-state defensive lineman who played for the school’s 2009 Group III state championship football team, according to an archival capture of a since-deleted page on the MTHS Athletics website.
That same year, Gregor was even selected to be part of the district’s “Heroes and Cool Kids” mentorship program for middle schoolers, reserved for high school students “considered positive role models by their administrators,” according to a 2010 report by the Home News Tribune community newspaper.
After graduation, Gregor briefly attended Wesleyan University, a small liberal arts school of about 3,200 students in Middletown, Conn.
He was arrested in November 2010 for allegedly stealing from a female dorm resident’s room and drunkenly assaulting two male students who tried to stop him as he fled, punching them and elbowing them in the face, the Middletown Press wrote at the time.
Gregor ultimately received his undergrad — a bachelor of arts in psychology — at the University of Arizona, an online school formerly called Ashford University, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He would later earn his master’s in secondary education and teaching from Johns Hopkins University School of Education, per LinkedIn.
The next several years would see him job-hopping across Florida, New Jersey and Maryland, working brief stints at an eclectic range of gigs including a crisis hotline counselor, realtor, math teacher and sales associate for the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning.
His current position lists him as a real estate agent at Red Door Real Estate in New Jersey, where he allegedly has worked since February 2018.
Gregor racked up more than half a dozen criminal charges in Baltimore between August, 2017 and April, 2018, including assault, robbery and destruction of property, public records show.
His LinkedIn indicates he was a math teacher at Urban Teachers in Baltimore at the time.
Disturbing text messages allegedly between Gregor and Micciolo shared online purport to show his callous disregard for Corey’s safety.
In one exchange, Micciolo tells Gregor that Corey had come upstairs crying after he allegedly smacked a football out of the child’s hands after he asked his dad about his high school glory days.
“Well that’s a lie, I smacked the ball out of his hand and he didn’t say a word to me,” Gregor sniped back, claiming the exchange had been “a joke.”
“Maybe he needs to be a little tougher because [that’s] soft tissue,” Gregor said derisively of the 6-year-old.
On March 20, 2021, Gregor and his son were seen entering the Atlantic Heights Clubhouse fitness center, where the youngster was promptly placed on the treadmill and began running, according to video obtained by CourtTV.com.
Footage captured Gregor walking up to the treadmill to increase the speed and raise the incline, but the sudden changes were too much for the little Corey’s legs, causing him to fall down multiple times and slide off the quickly moving track.
Gregor lifted his son and tossed him back onto the treadmill, which forced the boy’s legs to fold backward as the father seemingly clamped his teeth into Corey’s head.
On April 1, at the urging of his mother, Gregor took the boy to see a pediatrician. During the appointment, Corey was given a clean bill of health and reportedly revealed that his father made him run on the treadmill “because he was too fat,” according to multiple reports.
The next day, Corey woke up from a nap feeling nauseated, stumbling around and slurring his words. Gregor brought the boy to Southern Ocean Medical Center, carrying his son’s near-lifeless body into the hospital, as seen in disturbing surveillance footage.
His injuries were so severe that Corey suffered a seizure during a CT scan, forcing medical staff to take emergency measures in a doomed attempt to save his life.
The 6-year-old was pronounced dead shortly before 5 p.m.
An initial autopsy found Corey died as a result of blunt force injuries with cardiac and liver contusions with acute inflammation and sepsis.
Gregor was initially charged with child neglect, based in part on the treadmill video coming to light. However, in September 2021 a forensic pathologist determined the boy’s death was a homicide due to chronic child abuse, including blunt force injuries to his chest and abdomen and a laceration to his heart.
Gregor was arrested on murder charges connected to Corey’s death on March 9, 2022.
The dad turned down a 30-year plea offer and now faces life in prison if convicted. He’s being held without bond at Ocean County Jail.
