A 6-year-old girl died this week after succumbing to head trauma caused by the errant handle of a badminton racket that struck her during a family vacation in Maine, police said.
The girl, identified as Lucy Morgan of Stockholm, New Jersey, died Wednesday at Maine Medical Center in Portland following the accident at noon June 1 in Limerick, about 30 miles west of Portland , Maine State Police announced.
The siblings were playing badminton in the front yard of a lakeside cottage in Limerick when she was struck, according to police and her father’s accounts.
Father, Jesse Morgan, is pastor of worship and discipleship at Green Pond Bible Chapel in Newfoundland, New Jersey. He wrote about what happened to Lucy in a blog affiliated with the nondenominational institution.
He said the family had finished lunch and he was at the back of the cottage with his wife when they heard screaming out front.
“Due to a freak accident with a racket breaking during a downward swing, a sharp piece entered Lucy’s skull while she was sitting on the sidelines and caused catastrophic injuries “, he wrote. “She was still breathing but unresponsive as I held her with [her mother] Bethany cries out to God.
State police said “the aluminum handle of a badminton racket became dislodged from the wooden handle, causing the handle to strike the girl in the head, piercing her skull.”
Lucy was taken to MaineHealth Maine Medical Center in Sanford before being transferred by helicopter to Maine Medical Center in Portland, they said.
Jesse Morgan wrote that Lucy suffered from hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, oxygen-depriving brain damage that can be caused by traumatic injury. By Wednesday, he said, it seemed clear she wasn’t coming back.
“Given the initial trauma that caused the overall hypoxic brain injury she suffered and the severity of the swelling, it was almost certain that she had suffered brain death,” Morgan wrote.
She was pronounced dead that morning, he said.
It was not immediately clear whether Maine’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner had conducted an autopsy or planned an autopsy. Spokespeople were working on a response to a request for information.
Morgan wrote about how Lucy’s death deeply affected her mother and their three other children, a 4-year-old boy, an 8-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy.
“Shiloh immediately broke down,” the pastor wrote of the 8-year-old. “She and Lucy are best friends being the middle girls.”
The “calamity” tested his faith, Morgan wrote.
“We were ready to go to war against all of you by raging against the darkness,” he said.
An outpouring of support, including visits from parents and other church leaders and congregants, gifts of food and flowers, and expressions of support sent by some of the tens of thousands of people who read the stories of the pastor, were reminders of God’s benevolence. »wrote the pastor.
“Like gold at the bottom of a deep, dark well, there was and still is evidence of God’s grace in this total tragedy, we just had to be willing to plumb the depths to see it,” did he declare.
Green Pond Bible Chapel will hold a funeral service for Lucy on June 15.
“I want his story to be one of hope,” Morgan told NBC News on Friday. “Even though the worst happened, it helped others. »