Opinion ID: 2519814
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: rebecca's injuries

Text: ¶ 12 At trial, several individuals testified concerning the extent of Rebecca's injuries and that those injuries resulted in her death. Specifically, Shaw and other paramedics that attended to Rebecca's injuries at the scene testified. Dr. Howard A. Kadish, the pediatric doctor who met Life Flight at the hospital, and Dr. Timothy J. Kutz, who examined Rebecca on October 21, 1998, also testified. Finally, Dr. Maureen Frikke, the state assistant medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on Rebecca's body, testified. According to their testimonies in the aggregate, Rebecca suffered the following injuries: ¶ 13 Rebecca suffered extensive bruising from her scalp to the bottoms of her feet. Her scalp was bruised both internally and externally. She hemorrhaged into the space between the skull and the brain, and her brain was bruised and bleeding. ¶ 14 Rebecca sustained massive and widespread bruising on her back and buttocks. Red dots, where the surface of Rebecca's skin had been scraped away, were also evident on her buttocks. The tissue to the left of her vagina was red and swollen. Her pelvis was also bruised. ¶ 15 Dr. Frikke opined at trial that the shapes, sizes, and patterns of the bruises on Rebecca's body were consistent with having been whipped with the whips and straps seized from Fedorowicz's apartment. Specifically, she testified that many of the bruises were in the shapes of figure eights, triangles, and teardrops. She noted other bruises were distinctly linear and parallel to one another. Comparing the shape of the rivets and other ornamentation on the straps seized from Fedorowicz's apartment to the shapes of Rebecca's bruises, Dr. Frikke testified that the shapes of the bruises were consistent with having been struck by the straps. In addition, other bruises were consistent with having been grabbed or pinched by someone's fingers and thumb. She also testified that the injuries on Rebecca's buttocks were consistent with the kind of injuries that would be caused by the cat-o'-nine-tails seized from the apartment. The bottoms of Rebecca's feet were covered with bruises consistent with having been beaten with a stick or rod. Further, Rebecca had matching abrasions around her ankles consistent with having been bound. ¶ 16 Dr. Kadish concluded that all of the bruises resulted from nonaccidental trauma rather than from a fall and that they could not have been inflicted by Rebecca's two-year-old sister. According to Dr. Frikke, Rebecca bled to death into the tissues of her buttocks, back, arms, and head. She concluded that death occurred because of blood loss occasioned by blunt force injuries inflicted on the surface of the body, which caused hemorrhaging into the skin, fat, and muscle. Further, Dr. Frikke testified that these injuries would have been very, very painful and that a normal child would cry, or manifest pain, through irritability or crying. ¶ 17 Finally, according to the evidence at trial, Rebecca had no history of health problems before October 21, 1998, that would have resulted in her death. Specifically, Rebecca had no history of a blood disorder or disease that would have caused unusual bleeding.