WOODLAND — Hours before being hospitalized with fatal injuries, Cameron Morrison cried when he saw the man accused of inflicting them, the Davis toddler’s grandmother testified this week in Yolo Superior Court.
Tracy Rix babysat Cameron, 20 months, and his 3-year-old half-brother for several hours on Jan. 22, 2014, while their mother Veronica Rix worked and her boyfriend, Darnell Dorsey, attended classes at Sacramento City College.
When Dorsey picked up the boys at her West Sacramento home, “Cameron started to whine,” Tracy Rix recalled Monday, emitting a low moan to demonstrate how he sounded. “I didn’t think anything of it until he (Dorsey) yelled at him and told him to stop crying.”
Cameron Morrison was 20 months old when he died in January 2014. Courtesy photo
That night, Rix was summoned to Sutter Davis Hospital, where Cameron was transported after his mother returned to her family’s Olive Drive mobile home from a gym outing and Dorsey, who had been caring for the children, alerted her that Cameron had stopped breathing
Sutter doctors noted injuries such as bleeding to the brain, multiple rib fractures and a lacerated liver that were the suspected result of physical abuse. Davis police arrested Dorsey, who is not Cameron’s biological father, several hours later.
Dorsey, currently on trial, has pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of child assault resulting in death. His defense attorneys claim Cameron suffered from a “cascade” of symptoms that caused his death, primarily pneumonia-induced respiratory distress that cut off the oxygen to his brain. They also attribute the rib and organ injuries to aggressive CPR efforts and a prior fall down some stairs.
Cameron indeed was sick with a cough, runny nose and fever in the days before he died, multiple family members have testified.
“He wasn’t acting like his normal self. He seemed sad, like he was down,” Tracy Rix said of Cameron, who typically would follow and mimic his brother. “This time he just stood in the driveway and looked at him.”
Rix said while the kids had some minor injuries, such as scrapes and bruises, it was “not more than the average boy.” She described Dorsey as “rough” when he played with the boys, but “it was not in anger.”
She also said she had no reason to believe Dorsey was abusing her grandsons until her arrival at Sutter Davis Hospital during the early hours of Jan. 23, 2014, when a nurse informed her that Cameron was suffering from a brain bleed.
“I worked with preschoolers for four years. I know what that means,” Rix said under cross-examination by defense attorney Martha Sequeira. She said she pulled her daughter aside and “I told her she needed to listen and understand that this was not an accident.”
Rix grew visibly irritated during her back-and-forth Tuesday with Sequeira, whose questioning suggested that Rix embellished her statements to authorities in order to implicate Dorsey for Cameron’s death.
Rix denied that allegation, though she did acknowledge telling her daughter that “someone is going to leave this hospital in handcuffs.”
Asked why she didn’t take Cameron to the doctor the previous day after he projectile-vomited in a way that “I never saw before,” Rix said she was limited by a broken ankle, and that her daughter already had planned to take him in for a checkup.
After Sequeira brought out Rix’s history of drug-related convictions and possible inconsistencies in her statements to police, Rix shot back, “If I forgot something because my family was experiencing this terrible, terrible incident, would I be the first person in the world?”
Replied Sequeria: “You should have taken him to the hospital,” a comment that Judge Paul Richardson instructed the jury to disregard.
Hospital altercation
Jurors also heard Tuesday from Paul Contini Sr., Cameron’s maternal grandfather, who recounted a scuffle between his son and Dorsey in the Sutter Davis Hospital waiting room.
Awakened by a late-night phone call from his daughter Veronica Rix, Contini joined worried relatives at the hospital and noticed a bruise under Cameron’s brother’s eye, he said. When asked how he got the injury, the boy turned away and wouldn’t answer.
A self-described light sleeper, Contini, who lived across the street from Dorsey and Rix, said nothing woke him before the phone call, even though Dorsey claims he pounded on Contini’s front door when he found Cameron unconscious.
Contini recalled that as the family waited for news about Cameron, he, his son Paul Jr. and Tracy Rix had a conversation outside the hospital, the nature of which was not disclosed to the jury due to hearsay laws that preclude the introduction of statements made outside of court.
Away from the jury’s presence, however, attorneys have said Cameron’s brother told his uncle Paul Jr. that “Daddy gave Cameron a whuppin’ and Cameron got sick.”
Back in the hospital waiting room, Paul Jr. and Dorsey started “going at each other, and I jumped in the middle,” Contini said. Dorsey “seemed really stricken by what was going on. He seemed sad and he seemed upset.”
Contini also said he saw no signs that the boys were victims of abuse, but broke down on the witness stand when prosecutor Michelle Serafin showed him photographs of his older grandson with bruises across his back.
“I don’t know how they got there,” Contini said through tears. Asked if in hindsight he suspected foul play, he replied, “No — I just wish I could had been more active in their lives. If it was a fall or an accident, I could have been there and prevented it.”
Contini had a similar reaction earlier in his testimony, when Serafin showed him a photograph of Cameron that purportedly showed bruising to his head.
“I don’t see anything but his beautiful face,” Contini said, burying his own face in a tissue and weeping. “I don’t see anything but his beautiful smile.”
In the courtroom audience, Cameron’s biological father Julian Morrison, who has attended each day of the trial, also wiped tears from his eyes.
Bloody shirt
As Cameron lay dying at the UC Davis Medical Center pediatric trauma unit, his uncle Paul Contini Jr. went to his family’s mobile home with instructions to clean it up, according to testimony Wednesday.
Contini said he arrived to find the place “very thrashed,” the apparent result of a recent search by Davis police officers that left clothing strewn about the trailer and a piece of living-room carpeting removed.
He recalled bagging up clothing in the master bedroom when he came across a white shirt that “had a lot of blood on it.” He said he called his mother, Tracy Rix, and together they delivered the shirt to the Davis Police Department as possible evidence.
Shown two shirts in court, however — both a child’s long-sleeved shirt and an adult T-shirt — Contini could not positively identify either one as the one he found that day.
Contini’s testimony seemed to be at odds with his statement to Davis police around that time, which indicated he had found two bloodied shirts that he handed over to detectives.
“I’m ashamed of myself for not remembering much,” Contini said. “It’s making me mad.”
Dorsey’s defense attorneys confronted Contini about his sketchy memory, questioning how he came to find the bloodied shirt or shirts despite the thorough police search and hinting he may have planted them to implicate Dorsey.
Contini denied lying to police about the shirts, saying while he initially suspected Dorsey of abusing his nephews, “I don’t know anymore. …I was mad at first just for obvious reasons. You go through all your anger and guilt, and I’m done with all that. I’m not angry anymore.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene