A 6-year-old girl died this week after suffering head injuries when she was struck by the shaft of a badminton racket 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 after the accident, which happened midday June 1 in Limerick, about 30 miles west of Portland, according to Maine State Police.
Police and her father said the siblings had been playing badminton in the front garden of their lakeside cottage in Limerick when she was attacked.
Her father, Jesse Morgan, is the worship and discipleship pastor at Green Pond Bible Chapel in Newfoundland, New Jersey, and he wrote about what happened to Lucy on a blog affiliated with the interdenominational church.
He said the family had just finished lunch and he and his wife were at the back of the cottage when they heard screaming coming from up ahead.
“A freak accident occurred when the racket broke as it was swung downwards, causing a sharp shard to pierce Lucy’s skull as she sat on the sideline, causing devastating injuries,” he wrote. “When I came to hold her, she was still breathing but unresponsive. [her mother] Bethany cried out to God.
“The aluminum shaft of the badminton racket came off its wooden handle, causing the shaft to strike the girl in the head and penetrate her skull,” state police said.
Lucy was taken to MaineHealth Maine Medical Center in Sanford and then transferred by helicopter to Maine Medical Center in Portland, police said.
Jesse Morgan wrote that Lucy had traumatic hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, a condition that causes brain damage due to lack of oxygen. By Wednesday, Morgan said, it was clear that Lucy wasn’t going to recover.
“Given the severity of the initial trauma and swelling which led to the generalized hypoxic brain injury she suffered, it is almost certain that she was brain dead,” Morgan wrote.
She was pronounced dead that morning, he said.
It was not immediately clear whether an autopsy had been conducted or was planned by the Maine Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and a spokesman for the office was preparing a response to a request for information.
Morgan wrote about how Lucy’s death had deeply affected her mother and her three other children – a four-year-old boy, an eight-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy.
“Shiloh immediately broke down into tears,” the pastor wrote of the 8-year-old. “She and Lucy are best friends, being the middle girls.”
“This disaster tested his faith,” Morgan wrote.
“We were furious against the darkness and ready to fight you,” he said.
The outpouring of support — visits from relatives, other church leaders and congregations, gifts of food and flowers and words of support from some of the tens of thousands of people who read his account — was a reminder of God’s mercy, the pastor wrote.
“Like gold at the bottom of a deep, dark well, there was and still is evidence of God’s grace in this utter tragedy. We just had to be willing to plumb the depths to see it,” he said.
Green Pond Bible Chapel will hold Lucy’s funeral on June 15th.
“I hope her story is a story of hope,” Morgan told NBC News on Friday. “Even though the worst thing happened, her story has helped other people.”
