The notion Tameron Rose may have suffered fatal injuries from being shaken emerged as evidence presented at the second-degree murder trial of Jeffery Tippett in Corner Brook this morning.
There was also testimony that revealed the child’s autopsy showed he had a skull fracture.
The only witness on the stand was Dr. Dorothy Bautista, the pediatric ophthalmologist who examined the 11-month-old’s eyes at the Janeway Children’s Hospital before he died on Jan. 31, 2007.
In addition to testifying that she found retinal hemorrhages in both of the child’s eyes, with the worst bleeding present in the left eye, Bautista also testified that her recommendations following the examination were to investigate the possibility the child had been shaken.
She said the severity of the injuries were consistent with that sort of cause, especially in the absence of no obvious trauma to the outside of the child’s body.
She said she had seen similar injuries in a child who had fallen from a third-storey balcony in her past clinical experience.
Under cross-examination, Bautista told defence lawyer Keir O’Flaherty that she later learned Tameron Rose had, in fact, suffered a skull fracture, which was not discovered until his autopsy.
O’Flaherty asked Bautista if she had been aware, at the time of her examination, that Tippett’s partner — Tanya Tulk, who was caring for Rose with Tippett on Jan. 30, 2007 — had told police the child had banged his head on a crib earlier in the day.
Bautista said she had not been aware of that.
Tulk will be called as a witness this week.
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