The girlfriend of Patrick Parnel testified Wednesday that she and Parnel, who is accused of murdering their newborn daughter, thought the baby was dead when he left their Ocean Shores motel room with the child shortly after it was born.
Parnel’s trial for first-degree murder started Tuesday in Grays Harbor Superior Court.
Brittany Taylor told the court that she and Parnel went to the motel for the child’s birth because they didn’t want anyone to know she was pregnant. She said Parnel cut the umbilical cord after the baby was delivered and then put it in a garbage can in the motel room. Taylor said she didn’t see the baby moving or breathing and asked Parnel if he thought the baby was alive and he said he didn’t.
Taylor said that before Parnel left the motel with the baby she asked him if he would “take care of the situation.”
“I do not believe the baby was alive and I wouldn’t’ have let him take her if she was,” she said.
The prosecution alleges the baby was still alive when Parnel, 23, hit the child with a tire iron and hid her in some brush. A woman walking her dog found the baby’s body a couple of days later. Parnel faces life in prison if convicted.
Taylor was sentenced to four years and ten months in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree abandonment of a dependent person in 2013.
Sigmund Menchel, a forensic pathologist who performed an autopsy on the body, testified Wednesday that he found a two inch thick scalp laceration on the back of the baby’s head that exposed the skull. He also said that based upon the autopsy, it appears that the baby was born alive.
“To me it indicates the head of the newborn came into contact with a hard object; it could be a metal bar, it could be a hard edge of something, it was a very linear clean laceration,” he said.
Menchel said two blunt force trauma wounds to the infant’s head caused the baby’s death.
Grays Harbor Sheriff Detective Darrin Wallace testified that he searched the car that Parnel drove the night Taylor gave birth and found a four-way lug wrench in the backseat of the vehicle, the tool the prosecution believes was used to commit the alleged murder.
A jury of 14, 12 with two alternates, was selected on Tuesday and testimony began on Wednesday morning. Defense attorney Robert Quillian is defending Parnel and Chief Criminal Deputy Katie Svoboda and interim Grays Harbor County Prosecuting Attorney Gerald Fuller are prosecuting the case.
On Wednesday, Ocean Shores resident Diane Smith told the jury that she had been walking her dogs around 6 p.m. two days after the alleged murder when she noticed a washrag with blood on it hanging from a tree near an area of brush on Fisher Avenue in Ocean Shores. Smith didn’t walk into the brush but saw what she thought to be the head and arm of a baby.
Smith said she then told Brian Ritter, an Ocean Shores firefighter who lived nearby, what she saw. Ritter followed Smith to the scene and checked the pulse of the baby and determined that she was dead. “I knew the second I touched that arm,” he said.
Ritter said he called police. Officers from the Grays Harbor Sheriff’s office, Hoquiam Police Department and Ocean Shores Police Department arrived at the scene that night to investigate.
Taylor said she and Parnel were planning on putting the child up for adoption and made an appointment with Planned Parenthood, but failed to show up.
“It was a hard situation,” she said. “We didn’t feel like we were financially stable enough to have a child, we figured we’d just drop it off at a hospital.”
According to Taylor, she was living with Parnel at her grandfather’s house when she felt like she was going to go into labor. She then told Parnel and the couple made a mutual decision to go to a motel, as both did not want anyone to know about Taylor being pregnant. Taylor said they arrived at the motel around three in the afternoon on April 3 and that she went into labor about 1 a.m. on April 4.
When asked by the prosecution why the two didn’t take the baby to a hospital, Taylor said she didn’t know how long she had before the baby would be delivered. She said they originally planned to go to an Olympia hospital, due to the fact that Parnel had relatives who worked at Grays Harbor Community Hospital. “I didn’t want to end up giving labor on the side of the road in a car somewhere,” she said.
Grays Harbor Sgt. Robert Wilson told the court that he interviewed Parnel the weekend after the child’s body was found. Following pleas for help to identify the child’s parents, Misty Landon, who had been Taylor’s supervisor at Quinault Beach Resort and Casino, called the 911 center and said that Taylor had called in sick to work because of the pregnancy.
Wilson said he had gone to Taylor’s grandfather’s house in Humptulips with Undersheriff Dave Pimentel and Chief Criminal Deputy Steve Shumate and spoke with Parnel. When told what police were there to discuss, Wilson said Parnel told him, “We didn’t know what to do.”
When being interviewed by Wilson, Parnel said he disposed of a bed sheet from the motel that was stained from the birth. Initially, Parnel told Wilson he had discarded the sheet by throwing it in a burn pile near Copalis Crossing. He later admitted that he hadn’t been truthful with Wilson and directed him near milepost 10.5 on Kirkpatrick Road where the officer found the sheet. Wilson then placed Parnel under arrest.
In an interview at the Sheriff’s Office, Parnel told Wilson he had cut the baby’s umbilical cord with a scissors and inadvertently caused a laceration on the baby’s head while doing so. Parnel also stated that during the delivery, the infant went into the toilet Taylor was sitting on. After taking the baby out of the toilet, Parnel told Wilson he tried to slap the baby on the back to revive her and also put his finger in the baby’s mouth to remove mucus. Parnel told Wilson he drove the baby out near the airport to dispose of the child. “I think she (Taylor) just knew I as going to take the baby somewhere to hide it, but I did not tell her where,” he told Wilson. Wilson stated that Parnel told him he was not ready for a baby and also worried the child might suffer physical deformities or mental problems due to Taylor’s alcohol and marijuana consumption during the pregnancy, adding that he had talked to Taylor about the possibility of an abortion.
The trial will resume on Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. and is expected to continue through Friday.
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