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Aug 28, 2026 By Garrett Neese 5 min read

Throughout Jessica Welsh’s slide show, Zachary Bryte didn’t react.

Not at the image of his son, Kai, as a healthy newborn. Not at the photos taken at the hospital 31 days later, documenting the litany of severe breaks, bruises and other abuse at Bryte’s hands that had left him on the brink of death.

And not at the long list of after effects that Welsh, a Greene County Children and Youth Services case manager who subsequently adopted Kai, said will severely limit what he will do in a shortened life.

“He’s never going to get married, and go to school, go to prom,” she told Bryte at sentencing. “His life was stolen because you took it from him, and he didn’t deserve that … I hope you spend the rest of your life behind bars.”

Bryte, 26, of Washington Township, was sentenced to 32 to 64 1/2 years in prison Thursday morning for severely beating and sexually assaulting his infant son during the month between his birth and his arrest. He pleaded guilty to several charges, including attempted homicide, in May.

Bryte received credit for time served since June 2025, when he was arrested and charged with attempted homicide after the child’s birth mother took him to UPMC Greene with seizure-like symptoms.

The birth mother, Kyliene Rhome, 25, is scheduled to go to trial in October on charges of child endangerment.

Welsh first saw the child after his transfer to Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va., where doctors told her his prognosis was “very poor.”

Kai was placed in a medically induced coma for five days. Doctors put a bolt in his brain to relieve the pressure on it.

Examinations found 16 broken ribs in various stages of healing, brain bleeding, skull fracture, ankle and foot breaks and other injuries.

Welsh would stay over at the hospital with Kai every night for the first three weeks, leaving in the morning to return to her job in Greene County.

Revisiting Kai’s journey was emotional for Welsh, who choked up as she got to a photo of Kai holding her finger as he was inside a ventilator.

Kai is able to breathe on his own now. But the abuse has left permanent scars. The attacks to his face severed his optic nerve, leaving him blind. Kai, now 15 months, doesn’t laugh or smile, Welsh said. He’s unable to sit up, crawl, and can’t eat anything more solid than a puree.

And his condition has meant ongoing medical care, through frequent neurological treatment, physical therapy and multiple hospitalizations for seizures.

At some point, Welsh said, Kai’s brain functions will stop his ability to breathe.

“Mr. Bryte’s probably very lucky that I’m the one taking care of him, because I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure he lives as long as he can,” Welsh said. “He’s my world.”

Bryte was sentenced to consecutive sentences for attempted homicide, aggravated assault and involuntary deviate sexual assault. A sentence for endangering the welfare of children will run concurrently, while several other charges were merged into other counts.

The only mitigating factor Judge Jeffry Grimes found was Bryte’s decision to enter a guilty plea instead of subjecting Kai’s loved ones and the people of Greene County to the trauma of a trial.

Had the sentence come after a guilty verdict, Grimes said, he probably would have imposed a harsher sentence than called for under the guidelines.

“This is as tough as cases get,” he said. “This is so unfortunate in so many different ways.”

Greene County District Attorney Brianna Vanata had pushed for sentences on as many of the counts as possible to be served in a row, which would have given Bryte a sentence of 109.5 to 219 years in prison. At a minimum, she said Thursday, the physical assault and sexual abuse charges should be sentenced consecutively.

Any sentence had to account for the “horrific and extensive” nature of what Bryte did, and his continued lack of remorse, Vanata said.

“I fail to understand how a person can look at those photos and not react,” she said.

Vanata said after Thursday’s hearing she was pleased with the court’s sentence.

“There will never be enough time to make up for what was done to Kai, but we are grateful for the court’s decision and we are grateful for the court’s adoptive family,” she said. “This was a tough one.”

Bryte’s attorney, Joseph Zupancic, said a psychological assessment had shown Bryte has a “complete inability to process emotion.” He’s also had a long history of coming in and out of foster care, then experiencing depression, alcohol abuse and other problems as an adult.

None of those diminish the “devastating lifelong effects” on Kai, he said.

“It’s the final chapter of a very tragic tale,” he said. “It’s one of the cases where there are no winners, only losers.”