A 6-year-old girl died on Wednesday after she was accidentally struck in the head by a broken badminton racket while on a family vacation in Maine, Maine State Police said, according to NBC News.
The girl, identified as Lucy Morgan, was playing with her older brother in the front yard of a cottage in Limerick, Maine, on June 1 when the aluminum shaft of the badminton racket came off of the wooden handle and pierced her skull, according to police and the girl’s father.
She was rushed to a nearby hospital, then flown to Maine Medical Center in Portland, where she died on June 5, police said.
The injury was unintentional and an accident, according to police. It was unclear if Maine’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner had conducted an autopsy or planned one, according to NBC News.
Jesse Morgan, the girl’s father and a pastor at Green Pond Bible Chapel in Newfoundland, New Jersey, wrote about the accident and his daughter’s time in the hospital on his blog.
He wrote that he and his wife, Bethany, were eating lunch in the back of the cottage where they were vacationing from Stockholm, New Jersey, when they heard screaming from the front of the residence.
“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 wrote. “She was still breathing but unresponsive as I held her with Bethany crying out to God.”
Lucy suffered a global hypoxic brain injury, Morgan wrote, a neurological injury that is caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“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,” he wrote.
A memorial service was scheduled for June 15 at Green Pond Bible Chapel.
Morgan wrote of how Lucy’s death affected her siblings, a 4-year-old boy, an 8-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy.
“Shiloh broke down immediately,” he said, referring to his 8-year-old daughter. “She and Lucy are best friends being the middle girls.”
Morgan said in a statement to NBC News: “My desire is for her story to be one of hope. Even though the worst has happened, it has helped others.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
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