Six-year-old girl endured severe abuse, court told
Father, stepmother face first-degree murder charges in death of Meika
CALGARY Before she died on a Monday, six-year-old Meika Jordan allegedly endured four days of torture.
“Meika was covered in bruises,” Crown prosecutor Susan Pepper said this week. “She was dirty and her hair was matted. Chunks of it were missing. There was a dirty bandage on her left hand.’’
Her father and stepmother, Spencer Jordan, 29, and Marie Magoon, 25, face charges of first-degree murder in Meika’s death. Both have pleaded not guilty.
As their trial began in a Calgary courtroom this week, the prosecution outlined its theory about how paramedics came to find the child ‘‘clinically dead’’ at the bottom of a set of stairs at her home. She was rushed to Alberta Children’s Hospital, but died the following day, not long after family members said their final goodbyes to the girl.
“Our theory is that Spencer Jordan and Marie Magoon committed many of the acts of violence against Meika between Thursday and Sunday, Nov. 10 to 13, 2011,” Pepper said.
She said the violence allegedly inflicted by the father included Meika being pushed to the floor, causing her to hit her head, being punched in the stomach, dragged up stairs by her ankles and by her hair, and being thrown up the stairs, causing her to hit her head on a stove.
Magoon, she told court, is accused of forcing Meika to hold her hand over the flame of a lighter. As well, the prosecutor alleged Magoon slammed the girl’s head into the kitchen floor and forced Meika to run up and down the stairs with her hands tied in front of her. At one point, Pepper told court, Magoon tripped Meika while she was running, causing her to fall.
Court heard Meika suffered a large third-degree burn to her hand, head trauma, abdominal injuries and multiple other bruises and cuts.
“The medical team ... determined quickly that Meika had serious head injuries with extensive bleeding and swelling, and they knew she would not survive,” said Pepper.
An autopsy concluded the girl died from blunt-force trauma to her head, with five significant impacts, the prosecutor said. She was either struck with a flat object or her head was struck against a flat surface.
On Thursday the trial heard from neighbour Neguse Behre, who testified he saw Meika in her backyard a week before she died, and saw red marks on the girl’s cheeks and forehead and two black marks under her eyes. A woman with Meika told him she “falls down a lot,” he said.
Magoon spoke to police a month after Meika’s death. In the four-hour interview, played Thursday at the trial, she explained away all of Meika’s physical ailments as accidents.
“I know I’ve done nothing wrong, Magoon told Det. Dave Sweet.
‘‘And I don’t understand why I’m the biggest suspect here. I wasn’t the only one there, and I’ve also read out that blunt force trauma could happen years before death.
“How ... how would I have been involved in doing this? No, I didn’t do any of this. I’m sorry, but I did not. I did not do this. And you’re wrong. And this is just wrong. I’d have never hurt her. Trust me. I never have.
“I don’t know who could’ve done this. Meika came home bruised all the time. She ... her shins, for example ... she always had bruised shins.”
On that final weekend, Magoon said, Meika fell down the stairs at their Calgary home, burned her hand while playing with her electric hair-straightening iron, and was hit in the head with a basketball.
When the detective pointedly told her the injuries were not consistent with a fall down stairs and asked her how that could be, Magoon replied: “I have no idea.
“I don’t know. I heard her fall down the stairs. I heard her. I heard her fall down the stairs,” she said.
Meika’s mother, Kyla Woodhouse, sobbed in court as she heard paramedics outline how they found the girl “clinically dead” from her severe injuries, eyes partially open.
Woodhouse later said: “There are no words to describe this.”
On the stand, Woodhouse described a weekend with her daughter in November 2011.
She had walked into the bedroom where her kids were playing, jumping up and down on the bed.
“Hey, what are you doing?” she asked in a firm but cheery manner.
She said she wasn’t prepared for Meika’s immediate and visceral response. The usually friendly little girl cowered, pressing her back up against the wall.
“I’m sorry, mommy, I’m sorry,” said Meika. “Don’t give me big trouble ... I just don’t want big trouble, like Daddy and Marie give me.”