Windham man convicted for abuse of baby

Salem Editor — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 18:23:00 GMT

BY DARRELL HALEN

A Windham man was convicted of breaking seven bones in his infant son and acquitted of causing 19 other fractures.

Gurrie Fandozzi, 41, faces up to 30 years in prison on each conviction. A jury delivered their verdicts on Monday, Nov. 19, in Rockingham County Superior Court.

During the trial, prosecutors described Fandozzi, who was at home raising his two young children while his wife, Tammy, was working in a successful career for the Department of Social Security, as being unhappy and overwhelmed.

“He had opportunity. Nobody else did. He did it,” Assistant County Attorney Patricia Conway told the jury and pointed to Fandozzi during her closing arguments on Thursday, Nov. 15.

Despite that the state’s case was based on circumstantial evidence, Conway told them, they could decide beyond a reasonable doubt that Fandozzi abused his son.

“If you put all the pieces together and work hard at it, the state is confident you’ll reach the right decision in this case,” Conway said. “The only true and just verdict in this case – and that’s guilty.”

After deliberating two days, the jury decided Fandozzi was responsible for causing fractures to six ribs and a broken vertebrae in the lower back.

Conway told the jury during her closing arguments that after the baby was rushed to Children’s Hospital in Boston in early August 2006, Fandozzi came up with several stories as to why bones were broken. His son was six months old at the time.

She said it was not credible that Fandozzi couldn’t be sure if he tripped over a hose while holding the child or couldn’t remember if one day the baby hit his head on the sink or on the tub.

“He knew that he was in trouble, and he knew that he’d better come up with something fast and he did,” Conway said. “He came up with a bunch of different stories.”

She disputed that the injuries could have been accidental or due to a medical disorder. And Conway said that Fandozzi refused to sign a medical release form when an investigation into his son’s injuries began until he was told he could revoke it, and it was later revoked.

“Does that sound like someone who was cooperating with police?” asked Conway, who later concluded her arguments by showing a photo of the infant in a body cast.

Fandozzi’s lawyer, Steven Shadallah, argued that police, medical workers and social workers made a rush to judgment that the baby had been abused, and he tried to raise doubts that the broken bones were due to abuse.

Bones could have been inadvertently broken when Fandozzi was trying to perform CPR on his son on Aug. 2, 2006, the day emergency workers were called to Fandozzi’s home because the baby had stopped breathing.

He also raised the possibility that bones were broken by emergency workers. X-rays taken at Children’s Hospital, he said, discovered more broken bones than were previously found at Parkland Medical Center in Derry where the baby was brought first.

The baby’s pediatrician didn’t detect broken bones the day before the baby was rushed to the hospital, and a pediatric orthopedic surgeon who examined the baby said that based on medical records, the cause of the broken bones can’t be determined, Shadallah said. He also said his client cooperated with police and told them he had fallen three times with the baby.

Shadallah said that prosecutors brought up Fandozzi’s discord with his father-in-law because they wanted the jury to dislike his client.

Conway questioned if Tammy Fandozzi was a credible witness.

She said Tammy won’t accept that her husband is the cause of the broken bones.

But Shadallah said that Tammy wouldn’t have stayed with her husband if she thought he committed the abuse, that she would have protected her children at all costs.

“Mrs. Fandozzi is not a wallflower,” he said. “Mrs. Fandozzi is not Tammy Wynette. She is not just standing by her man.” Shadallah said that prosecutors had failed to prove a motive. But Conway said she didn’t need to.

“We are never going to wrap our brains around why, why on earth would someone, the father, hurt his own infant? We don’t know why.”

Windham News : Conviction

Windham man convicted for abuse of baby