Kaylee Gain’s guilt-ridden father admits her childhood was affected by drugs and family dysfunction
The St. Louis teen whose viral after-school beating left her near death had endured a childhood marred by drugs, dysfunction and instability, her father admitted to The Post this week in an exclusive interview.
Speaking out for the first time, Clinton Gain said he and Kaylee’s mother, April Nordstrom, both struggled with drug addiction during her youth — and she suffered greatly because of it.
Kaylee’s parents split up when she was just five, leaving her and her little brother living with Nordstrom. While she has since righted herself, the troubled mother raised the tots while in the throes of addiction, Clinton said.
Their home predicament became so dire the children were sent to live with their grandparents when Kaylee was eight years old and stayed with them for two years.
By that point, Clinton said he had rehabilitated himself, remarried and maintained steady employment. Kaylee and her brother came to live with him and his new spouse, Jamie Gain, and remained with them for five years.
“She was just a normal kid,” the father said. “We tried to give them some stability and structure.”
Jamie said Kaylee struggled to accept her stepmother at times, as was natural. But overall, those years were largely free of major turbulence.
“She was just a little girl,” she said. “She played with Barbies, with dolls.”
But as she entered her teenage years, Kaylee began to yearn for her mother and lobbied her dad to let her return to Nordstrom’s home.
“She was becoming a young woman,” he said. “She said she needed her mother, and April was in a good place by that time. She was working, she was doing okay.”
With some reservations, Kaylee’s father agreed to the arrangement — but soon came to regret the decision.
His daughter, he said, began to have problems at school and was routinely involved in altercations.
“We don’t know who started things, if it was her or other people,” Jamie said. “But there were problems.”
Nordstrom would relay worrisome reports from school administrators and teachers, but with few details. Clinton said he reached out to her teachers and encouraged them to alert him to any issues — but that they weren’t communicative.
“She just didn’t have the structure anymore,” Clinton said. “The things we tried to tell her weren’t reinforced with her mother. There weren’t these issues until a few years ago.”
April Nordstrom could not be reached, while Gain family attorney Bryan Kaemmerer declined to comment when contacted by The Post.
Clinton said he and Nordstrom had remained cordial and collaborative, but that Kaylee’s mom had difficulty containing her daughter’s teenage rebellions.
The teen’s dad said he tried to convince Kaylee to return to his home, but the increasingly taciturn adolescent resisted, fearing a more restrictive environment.
The father sensed his daughter was in a slow spiral — but was unaware of the extent until the video of her head being smashed into concrete, leaving her twitching on the ground, went viral on social media.
A sobbing Nordstrom first got in touch with Jamie on March 8 after the fight, telling her Kaylee had been seriously hurt at school.
The stepmother immediately drove to the hospital and called Clinton.
“When I first got to the hospital I was worried and concerned,” he said. “But when I found out this was from a fight, I got angry. Because I felt like this could have been prevented.”
A longstanding feud between Gain and school rival Maurnice DeClue, 15, finally erupted in violence last month, when the pair agreed to settle their differences roughly a mile away from Hazelwood East HS near St. Louis.
DeClue — who has been described as a high achieving honors student by her family — gained the upper hand in the brawl and repeatedly smashed Gain’s head on the sidewalk.
The beating left her with a fractured skull and brain bleeding. Kaylee is slowly recovering from her injuries, but still requires help to walk and makes little sense when speaking.
DeClue’s family has asserted Kaylee bullied her previously at school and the fight was a means of self-defense — a portrayal denied by Kaylee’s family.
Still in custody, DeClue is now facing felony assault charges as local prosecutors seek to try her as an adult. Her attorney did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Kaylee’s father said he and Nordstrom have already agreed to have her live with him after her release from the hospital.
“I have a lot of guilt that I didn’t bring her back sooner,” he said.
