Expert details girl’s injuries but finds no cause of death

A third defense medical expert is offering an opinion on the child abuse beating death of 5-year-old Talia Williams.

Pediatrician and child abuse expert Eli Newberger said Thursday in U.S. District Court that when Williams died, "there were many organ systems that were failing."

He said Williams had multiple organ injuries and that her body would have had difficulty repairing them because of food deprivation.

Newberger said Williams did not die from a head injury, as her autopsy concluded. But he said he is not able to pinpoint exactly what killed her on July 16, 2005.

"I cannot identify a single organ system the failure of which is associated with Talia’s death," he said.

The girl’s father, former Schofield Barracks soldier Naeem Williams, is on trial for capital murder in the death of his daughter. If convicted, he will face the death penalty under federal law.

He has already testified that he hit his daughter in the back, causing her to fall and hit the back of her head on the concrete floor of their home at Wheeler Army Airfield. She was declared dead less than three hours later.

Williams also testified that he hit his daughter with a belt and punched her in the chest earlier in the day.

The girl had injuries to her liver, a kidney, adrenal gland and colon. She also had 10 rib fractures and a separated left shoulder.

Her autopsy described her colon injury as a pinpoint laceration.

Newberger said the girl’s colon experienced a blowout injury, likely from kicking or stomping, that almost certainly would have forced bacteria out of the colon and into her bloodstream. That would have caused infection of the blood, or sepsis, which would have lowered her blood pressure and caused toxic shock.

Her stepmother, Delilah Williams, testified she stomped on the girl multiple times and slammed her stepdaughter’s head into a wall on June 29, 2005.

A previous defense medical expert testified that Talia died from infection of her blood and the back of her abdominal cavity wall from injuries she could have suffered during her stepmother’s stomping.

Another defense medical expert testified that Talia Williams died from complications of injuries to her head, chest and abdomen that she could have sustained during the stomping incident.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Kanthi De Alwis performed the girl’s autopsy in 2005 when she was Honolulu chief medical examiner. De Alwis testified that the girl died when her head hit the floor.

The impact caused the girl’s brain to twist inside her skull, cutting off connections to the area of the brain that controls breathing, said De Alwis, who is scheduled to return to the witness stand Wednesday.