Crying infant’s death detailed
Alexis Workman was a fussy baby who often cried, Fayette County jurors heard Wednesday. On the day the 2½-month-old suffered fatal injuries that state police allege were inflicted by her father, Ryan Workman, the infant cried for at least an hour straight, according to testimony in the first day of Workman’s homicide trial.
Harold Workman testified his son, Ryan, got to their Grindstone home around 11 or 11:30 a.m. on Aug. 1, 2004, taking his daughter from the car.
“He was carrying her and she was crying,” Harold Workman testified.
Harold Workman said his granddaughter “cried constantly,” and that upset his son.
“Sometimes, the baby got the best of him,” Harold Workman testified.
The two ate lunch, Workman testified, while Alexis sat in her baby swing, crying. Police allege that Ryan Workman shook his daughter and dropped her into that plastic swing, causing serious brain damage that ultimately killed the infant. He is charged with a single count of criminal homicide.
“I seen him put her in the swing, but I didn’t see nothing abnormal about it,” Harold Workman testified.
He said he was in the kitchen and his son was in the living room at the time of the alleged incident.
Later in his testimony, confronted with a statement he gave to police immediately after Alexis Workman was injured, Harold Workman testified he could not remember if he saw his son put the baby in the swing.
After lunch, Harold Workman said, his son went to check on the baby and yelled that she was not breathing. While Ryan Workman performed CPR, Harold Workman called Fayette 911 around noon, he testified.
“I got a blue baby here,” Harold Workman can be heard telling a dispatcher in the emergency call tape played for jurors.
He calmly told the dispatcher that the infant was not breathing and that some substance – he later identified it as blood – was coming out of the baby’s mouth.
Harold Workman relayed some questions from the dispatcher to his son, including a query as to whether the child fell forward and hit her head. His son, in the background, said the baby was in her swing when she started bleeding, according to the tape.
Near the end of the tape, shortly before the ambulance arrived at the Workman home, a tearful Ryan Workman got on the phone with the dispatcher. Their conversation lasted seconds and concerned resuscitation efforts.
Ryan Workman picked his daughter up at the home of his mother-in-law, Brenda Lackner, on Aug. 1 around 10 or 10:30 a.m., Lackner testified. The baby had spent the night there.
“That baby was fine,” Lackner testified when First Trial Assistant District Attorney Jack R. Heneks Jr. asked if she saw any blood or injuries on the baby.
Under questioning from Workman’s attorney, Susan Ritz Harper, Lackner testified she did not hesitate to give the child to her son-in-law.
A couple of hours later, Lackner testified, she received a phone call from Workman’s mother, Sandy, who told her something was wrong with Alexis.
Both Lackner and her husband, Alex, testified they did not harm the child.
Nearly everyone who testified Monday that knew Alexis Workman said the child was fussy and cried often, including the child’s mother, Jennifer, and paternal grandmother, Sandra Workman.
Jennifer and Ryan Workman lived with Ryan’s parents, Harold and Sandra, at their 1028 W. Second St. home in Grindstone at the time of Alexis’ death.
Jennifer Workman, who now lives in Pitcairn, Allegheny County, testified she first found out something was wrong with their daughter around noon while at work at the Dollar General in Belle Vernon
She testified that her husband called and told her only that Alexis was bleeding, but he didn’t say what happened to her.
“He said he set her down in the swing and that’s about it,” Jennifer Workman testified.
She told jurors that her husband had trouble feeding their daughter because she was a fussy infant. Those difficulties resulted in Ryan Workman “always being in an upset mood,” Jennifer Workman testified.
Under questioning from Harper, Jennifer Workman acknowledged telling state police trooper Samuel Ferguson that her husband was not violent and did not yell or spank their children.
Workman’s mother, Sandra, also testified that her granddaughter “was fussy like three-quarters of the time.”
She indicated that the infant was supposed to be on Zantac to control acid reflux, with doses before each bottle. Without the medicine, Alexis cried after she ate, she testified.
Jennifer Workman testified her daughter was not on any medication.
Sandra Workman testified that while her husband and son were watching Alexis on Aug. 1, she received multiple calls from them asking what to do to calm the crying baby.
Her husband, Harold, called her later in the afternoon, after ambulance personnel took the infant to the hospital.
Some medical testimony indicated that Alexis Workman regained a pulse on the way to the hospital.
Brownsville Ambulance Service emergency medical technician Mike Bernott III testified that when the ambulance arrived at the Workman home, he ran to the house and carried the baby back to the vehicle.
“She was no bigger than the size of a baby doll,” Bernott said.
The trial is scheduled to resume this morning, when doctors are expected to testify about what they observed or what they believe caused Alexis Workman’s injuries.