It was like her soul was crying out for something | Free News

Emotional testimony from ER doc, investigator on first day of trial

PHILADELPHIA — Dr. Danielle Blakeney testified in medical terms when she described the condition and care of 6-month-old Rosalee Stringer after she was rushed to the emergency room at South Central Regional Medical Center with a head injury on the night of Oct. 26, 2019.

But it was the longtime ER physician’s description of the sound coming from the baby that captivated the courtroom.

“The sound she was making ... ” Blakeney said, her voice quivering, “... it was like her soul was crying out for something.”

Defense attorneys for Jones County residents Brandon Gardner, 27, and Brooke Stringer, 23 — who are on trial in Neshoba County for capital murder in Rosalee’s death — immediately objected to the doctor’s testimony, and Judge Dal Williamson sustained the objection.

But the doctor’s last words from the stand lingered as she left the courtroom, and Gardner turned to glare at her for several seconds as she walked behind him.

Blakeney has been an emergency medicine physician at SCRMC since 2009, but this is the first time she’s had to testify in court, she told Assistant District Attorney Kristen Martin.

But a seasoned investigator who has dealt with numerous difficult cases over the years also had an uncharacteristic emotional moment on the witness stand. Tonya Madison had to choke back tears and collect herself after seeing a poster-size photo of the bubbly baby in a knit cap before identifying her. Martin held up the portrait, and after a long pause, Madison said, “That’s Rosalee.”

Madison, who was chief investigator for the Jones County Sheriff’s Department at the time of Rosalee’s death but now serves as an investigator for the Jones County DA’s Office, was the third witness for the state on Tuesday. It was the first day of testimony in what’s expected to be a two-week trial. Madison was expected to continue testifying on Wednesday morning followed by a Child Protective Services social worker and JCSD investigator Sgt. J.D. Carter.

The Neshoba jury — made up of six white men, four white women, one black woman and one Choctaw man plus four alternates (two white men, a black man and a white woman) — was seated late Monday afternoon to try the case that was moved to Philadelphia after defense attorneys were granted a change of venue because of pre-trial publicity.

Attorneys made opening statements on Tuesday morning. Martin “introduced” jurors to Rosalee, whose portrait was displayed on an easel as the prosecutor gave a brief background on the defendants. Gardner and Stringer began dating in July 2019, about three months after Stringer had Rosalee, whose father was a German exchange student, and the mother and child moved into Gardner’s residence on Highway 28 in Gitano a short time later. She then outlined the sequence of events that led up to Rosalee being rushed to SCRMC and dying at University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, then Gardner and Stringer being charged more than two years later after awaiting autopsy results from the crime lab. Martin also told jurors what the defendants’ attorneys and their experts were likely to claim.

“There will be a lot of witnesses, and you’re going to hear a lot of testimony,” she said before encouraging them to “pay attention” to the medical evidence and “you’ll find them both guilty of capital murder” because both “had a part in causing the death of baby Rosalee.”

Stringer’s attorney Tangi Carter also asked jurors to pay attention to what they see and “what you don’t see,” she said, and later pointed specifically at the lack of video surveillance from the SCRMC employees’ daycare where Rosalee stayed while Stringer worked at an SCRMC diagnostic lab. They claim that Rosalee’s fatal injury was a result of bumping her head there on Oct. 2, 2019 — more than three weeks before the night she was rushed to the ER.

“You won’t see that ... and that would tell us exactly what happened,” Carter said, referring to video evidence. “You will be left with a lot of speculation ... guesswork and possibilities, and the government is going to ask you to make a decision based on that. Capital murder is the highest crime in the land. You cannot base your decision on guesswork.”

Gardner’s attorney Chris Collins — a former circuit judge from Philadelphia who joined Marcus Evans of Waynesboro on the defense team in recent weeks — noted that it’s been a “very long investigation,” but despite the passage of time, his client’s explanation of events that fateful night has remained the same.

“There are going to be many different theories of defense that I’m sure will be developed in this trial,” Collins said. “My job is to challenge the evidence of the state at every turn. You can only begin to deliberate on what you’ve heard after you have heard all of the evidence.”

Adam Cochran was first on the scene for JCSD and first on the stand. He was a shift sergeant at the time of the incident, but he now works for Deep Well Energy Services. He met the couple at Faith Community Church on Highway 28 after they decided to head to SCRMC with Rosalee rather than wait for an ambulance. They were intercepted there by EMServ and volunteer first-responders, who had taken the baby and were tending to her when Cochran pulled up.

Jurors heard the frantic 911 calls from Gardner, with Stringer screaming, crying and hyperventilating in the background, as the call first went to Smith County then was dispatched to Jones County. Carter put her arm around Stringer to console her as she sobbed during that and later when Cochran’s body-mic picked up the sound of Rosalee crying out in the trauma room of the ER.

Cochran called Madison after the investigator who was supposed to be on call didn’t answer his phone, he said, and he contacted CPS, noting that was protocol for the JCSD in any case involving a child and a serious injury.

Gardner and Stringer are heard more than once telling what had happened that day and night — how they went to Hattiesburg to shop for an outfit for Rosalee’s first Halloween, then took her to the South Mississippi Fair before going home. Stringer was taking a shower and Gardner was searching for his phone, which was on the bed above where the pallet that Rosalee had been placed on to sleep for the night. He roused Rosalee, who was able to sit up briefly by herself, and as he tried to slip out of the room with his phone, he “heard a thud,” he said, adding that he assumed it was her head hitting a nearby nightstand. She began to cry, so he picked her up and tried to console her, but her “eyes rolled back” and she “went limp” before he rushed her to Stringer, who was still in the shower and began administering CPR while he called 911.

Jurors saw some of the encounter and rush to SCRMC from Cochran’s dash-cam and heard all of his interactions with them and Madison at the hospital and later at the house, where they all met CPS investigator Mary Grantham while Gardner and Stringer told them what happened and gathered up clothes before heading to UMMC, where Rosalee had been airlifted. They also brought up the fact that Rosalee had bumped her head at daycare earlier that month and Stringer showed them photos of the bruise.

Cochran is heard saying that he did not suspect foul play and noted that Gardner and Stringer had been “100 percent cooperative” throughout the ordeal. “I think it’s going to be a complete accident.”

That’s a point that Stringer’s attorney Janson Owen — a late addition to her defense team — hammered on in his cross examination of Cochran.

“I didn’t suspect foul play at the time,” Cochran said. “I just knew that baby was sick and needed help.”

In her redirect questioning, Martin clarified that Cochran was not an investigator or a doctor. When Collins cross-examined Cochran, he asked if it was true that his client’s story stayed the same, and he agreed that it did.

“Does being consistent mean it’s true?” Martin asked Cochran on redirect.

Cochran said, “No, ma’am.”

Blakeney described the baby as “critically ill” when she arrived in the ER, describing how she was vomiting, “posturing ... an abnormal extension of the arm” and a “blown pupil” — all indicators of a brain injury, she said. “She would not respond to stimuli, and she would cry out every now and then, but not the rigorous, healthy cry of a 6-month-old, but the guttural, mournful sound.”

She noted no lacerations, blood, bruises or bumps. Her goal, she said, was to stabilize Rosalee so she could be flown to the pediatric ICU at Blair E. Batson Hospital for Children at UMMC as quickly as possible.

After hearing the explanation of what happened to the baby, “In my mind, I was thinking it wasn’t consistent with the force it would take to cause the injury I was seeing,” Blakeney testified.

The jury was shown a checklist from the ER that asks, among other things, if the “Injury fits reported mechanism.” That box on the document contains the word “No.”

Madison talked about going to the house that night and drew a layout of where things were and showed a photo of the pallet and nightstand. She tried to calm the couple by assuring them that investigators have to check out injuries to children and they often turn out to be “natural causes or accidents” and she encouraged them to be careful driving to Jackson.

The next day, Madison got a call from Dr. Scott Benton at UMMC about the nature of the “really severe” injury. And then she got a call that Rosalee had passed away. Those calls started the process for the case that’s being tried now, almost four years later.

Benton, a pediatric specialist whose testimony in recent cases has been called into question, is expected to testify for the state later this week.

Read the recap of day two here: https://www.leader-call.com/news/the-autopsy-can-t-lie/article_87cdbe58-056c-11ee-b069-7775a19b13cf.html

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