AUBURN — A retired chief medical examiner and retired neuroradiologist testified Friday that the cause of Harper Averill’s fatal injuries in 2020 were due to nonaccidental trauma.
An Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office detective also took the witness stand in Androscoggin County Superior Court to end week one of the murder and manslaughter trial of the infant’s father, Trevor Averill, 31, of Buckfield.
Harper Averill died July 26, 2020, at Maine Medical Center in Portland, four days after first responders rushed to Averill’s home for a report of a 2-month-old in medical distress. Averill told investigators he was awakened after midnight on July 22, 2020, to the cries of his hungry daughter. After taking her out of her sleeping area and feeding her from a bottle, she began gagging and stopped breathing when he raised her to his chest for burping.
Androscoggin County Sheriff’s deputies and rescue personnel performed life-saving measures before she was transported to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, then flown to the Portland hospital.
Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Detective Troy Young Sr. testified Friday on his handling of the Averill case and his interviews with Harper Averill’s parents at Maine Medical Center before state police took over the case.
Prosecutors played the 28-minute interview with Averill in which he stated much of the narrative already established in court. Among the narrative was his recounting of dropping his daughter from a waist-high level while standing up from a couch.
Averill said the incident happened a month before her death, that he sought advice from his mother and that the baby was acting fine afterward.
Dr. Mary Edwards-Brown, a retired neuroradiologist from Indiana, told the jury that review of Harper Averill’s imaging indicated a dying brain.
She said the skull fracture, which Averill’s attorneys James Howaniec and Verne Paradie claimed could be indicative of a dropping incident weeks before, was acute, or recent.
“This is a rather clear-cut example of nonaccidental trauma, both acute and chronic,” Edwards-Brown said. “There was no callus formation as would be expected from a week-old injury … The spinal hemorrhage is explained by severe back and forth shaking.”
Retired chief medical examiner Dr. Margaret Greenwald also testified the skull fracture and resulting hemorrhage were a result of inflicted traumatic injury.
Paradie asked if the infant’s hypoxia and ischemia could be caused by a lack of oxygen causing brain swelling and bursting of an existing blood clot.
Greenwald said the older clot did not show signs of acute bleeding. Harper Averill’s death was caused by inflicted trauma, not a lack of respiration, she said.
Justice Jennifer Archer is presiding over the trial and Assistant Attorneys General Suzanne Russell and Lisa Bogue are prosecutors.
Averill faces 25 years to life in prison for depraved indifference murder and up to 30 years in prison for manslaughter.
The trial will continue Monday and, according to court officials, will likely last all week.
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