A well-known forensic pathologist and professor of pathology at Wayne State University in Detroit testified Tuesday that in his professional opinion, 2-year-old Breydon Ferrell would have died of brain-swelling, caused by a fall out of his crib where he hit his head on the carpet-covered concrete floor.
“This child climbed out of his crib, and fell, a complicated fall, but one fall, twisted to hit the television or the table, and slid down,” said Dr. Werner Spitz said.
Spitz, who has testified in the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, testified in Hancock County court today in the case of Brent Houdeshell, a 29-year-old Arlington man accused of killing Breydon in March 2016.
Spitz stated he recreated the fall and reviewed documents provided by the autopsy and Findlay Police. He gave jurors a demonstration of his ideas of the fall.
Spitz said Breydon would have tried to get out of the crib, gotten his foot caught on the spring under the mattress, and fallen out of the crib, likely hitting himself on the table and television near his crib and fracturing his skull on the floor, which is concrete under a thin carpet.
Spitz said Breydon’s head injury would have been caused by force of the brain moving inside the skull after hitting the floor.
Spitz further said the child clearly had a lucid interval where he did likely eat ice cream, pointing to a brown, milky-like substance found in the child’s stomach during his autopsy.
“This is not an abused child. I cannot see an abused child,” Spitz said, saying the injuries on an abused child were inconsistent with those found on Ferrell.
He explained the marks on the face of the child and his arms were caused in the fall, and injuries to the child’s chest would likely have been from CPR.
In cross-examination, Hancock County assistant prosecutor Colleen Limerick asked Spitz if he had taken into account a thin pad between the carpet and the cement. Spitz said he had asked if there was anything above the cement and no one told him that there was a pad there.
Limerick also asked Spitz if a fracture of the skull could be caused by someone slamming Breydon’s head into the carpet. Spitz replied that while it was possible to see an injury, injuries around the inside of the skull would not also have appeared.
She also asked if Spitz knew that when prosecutors had independently measured the doll, it was shorter and heavier than Breydon’s measurements at his autopsy. Spitz said he did not know.
Finally, Limerick pointed out in a demonstration Spitz put on for the jury in the courtroom this morning, the right foot was held in between the crib slats. Breydon’s left leg was fractured during his autopsy.
Spitz said he had been paid $5,120 so far by Hancock County courts and expects to make up to $7,000 for his opinions.