According to police, a 6-year-old girl passed away this week from brain damage sustained when she was struck by an unintentional badminton racquet shaft while on vacation in Maine with her family.
Following the June 1 midday collision near Limerick, some 30 miles west of Portland, the girl, named as Lucy Morgan of Stockholm, New Jersey, passed away on Wednesday at Maine Medical Center in Portland, according to Maine State Police.
She was struck while playing badminton with her siblings in the front yard of a lake villa in Limerick, according to her father’s and the police’s reports.
The father, Jesse Morgan, serves as the Green Pond Bible Chapel’s worship and discipleship pastor in Newfoundland, New Jersey. He posted about Lucy’s ordeal on a blog connected to the nonreligious organization.
He added that after the family had eaten lunch, he and his wife were standing in front of the cabin when they heard screams.
“Due to a freak accident with a racquet that broke on a downward swing, a sharp piece had entered Lucy’s skull while she was sitting on the sideline and caused catastrophic injury,” he stated. “She was still breathing but unresponsive as I held her with [her mother] Bethany crying out to God.”
“A badminton racquet’s aluminum shaft had become dislodged from the wooden handle, causing the shaft to strike the girl in the head, piercing through her skull,” according to state police.
After being brought to the MaineHealth Maine Medical Center in Sanford, Lucy was reportedly flown by helicopter to the Maine Medical Center in Portland.
According to Jesse Morgan, Lucy experienced oxygen-depriving brain damage known as hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, which can result from severe brain injury. He claimed that by Wednesday, it was obvious that she wouldn’t be returning.
“Given the initial trauma that brought about the global hypoxic brain injury she endured with the severity of the swelling, it was almost certain that she had endured brain death,” Morgan stated.
He claimed that morning they had declared her dead.
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It wasn’t immediately apparent if an autopsy was performed or was scheduled by Maine’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner. There, a spokesperson was drafting a response to an information request.
Morgan detailed the profound impact Lucy’s passing had on her mother and their three other children, a boy who is four years old, an 8-year-old girl, and a boy who is ten years old.
Regarding the eight-year-old, the pastor noted that “Shiloh broke down immediately.” As the middle girls, she and Lucy are great friends.
Morgan wrote that the “calamity” tested his faith.
He declared, “We were ready to go to war with all of you by raging against the darkness,”
The pastor noted that an abundance of support, including visits from family members, other church officials, and members of the congregation, food and flower presents, and messages of encouragement from some of the tens of thousands of people who read his reports, served as a reminder of God’s kindness.
“Like gold at the bottom of a deep dark well, there was and is evidence of God’s grace in this utter tragedy, we just had to be willing to plumb the depths to see it,” he stated.
On June 15, a funeral ceremony will be held at Green Pond Bible Chapel for Lucy.
