Attorneys ask jurors to weigh evidence in West Valley toddler's death | Crime & Courts

In his last video while still alive, Alexander “Alec” Lynch is seen next to a happy, healthy toddler riding in a shopping cart.

Hours later he was in a coma and police officers, paramedics and doctors fought in vain for his life.

On Friday morning, a Yakima County Superior Court jury had to determine whether Alec's mother's boyfriend, Terrence Chip Ogle, killed the child.

Both sides presented their closing arguments to the jury, who were given the case at 11:15 a.m. and were expected to deliberate throughout the day before adjourned for the weekend.

Ogle, 32, is accused of intentionally murdering Alec on April 27, 2020. Specifically, prosecutors argue that Ogle hit the 15-month-old toddler on the head, fracturing Alec's skull and causing a massive brain hemorrhage that led to his death.

Yakima Assistant District Attorney Brooke Wright told jurors that the evidence showed Alec was intentionally attacked and died from his injuries, and that Ogle was the only person responsible.

But Charles Dold, Ogle's attorney, said prosecutors had asked the jury to reach a conclusion that was not supported by the facts.

“There is no evidence. No injuries to Terrence's hands, no weapon, no mechanism that caused the injuries,” Dold said, adding that a doctor's claim that Alec's injury should have killed him within minutes was contradicted by the hours-long passage of time Wright laid out in her case.

Emergency call

In the early morning hours of April 27, 2020, Yakima Police were called to the West Valley apartment where Ogle lived with his then-girlfriend Marie Kotler and their three children because one child was unresponsive.

Arriving officers found Ogle on the kitchen table performing CPR on Alec and took over CPR efforts. Alec's heart stopped at least once before he arrived at MultiCare Yakima Memorial Hospital, where he was diagnosed with a skull fracture. He was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he died that same night.

Wright said the evidence showed that Alec's injury was not caused by an epileptic seizure and his collapse on the living room floor, as Ogle had told a police detective.

Instead, Alec's skull had been fractured hours earlier, Wright said, and Ogle took steps to conceal that fact from Kotler.

After going shopping and getting fast food, Kolter, Ogle and Alec returned to the apartment, where she put Alec in a playpen in her bedroom for a nap before driving to Sunnyside to pick up her other children at around 5:20 p.m. She left Alec in Ogle's care.

Ten minutes later, Ogle called her and said Alec had hurt his nose on a Nerf toy gun in the playpen, but he was OK. She came home at 7 p.m. and checked on Alec, who was sleeping in the bedroom. The only light came from the light in the bathroom next door.

“She didn't notice anything unusual,” Wright said. “But she never saw him awake again.”

Kotler was getting ready for bed around midnight, left her phone in the living room and noticed a smell of vomit coming from the playpen, Wright told jurors. Ogle picked Alec up, cleaned him up and changed his pajamas while Kotler changed the sheets and Ogle put the baby back to bed.

Kotler told jurors that Ogle woke her up at 1:30 a.m. and told her Alec was unresponsive. She began CPR while Ogle called 911.

Wright said the medical evidence and circumstantial evidence suggested that for some reason Ogle delivered multiple blows to Alec's head, either by hitting him with an object or slamming him against a hard surface.

“If Alec had had a terrible accident during his shift, (Ogle) would have called 911,” Wright told jurors. “He wasn't thinking about saving Alec; he was thinking about saving Terrence.”

Wright said Kotler's phone also performed an Internet search on sleep and brain injuries as she was getting ready for bed. However, she said the spelling errors in that search did not match other Internet searches on Kotler's phone, including a search on “dry drowning” that Kotler is said to have performed previously when Ogle made Alec go underwater in his bathtub.

Although Yakima County Superior Court Judge Kevin Naught allowed prosecutors to present Apple Watch heart rate data that they said showed Kotler was asleep when Alec was injured, Wright ultimately did not bring Kotler back to the stand to discuss it.

Medical report

Doctors testifying in the case said lethargy and vomiting are common symptoms of severe brain trauma, Wright told jurors. Additionally, Alec was unable to take a bottle, eat corn chips or stand up, as Ogle claimed.

But Dold said testimony from Dr. Carole Jenny of Harborview's child abuse unit that Alec's injuries should have killed him within minutes contradicts Wright's timeline.

Ogle, on the other hand, stuck to his story, volunteered to talk to investigators, and even immediately drove from Peshatin to Yakima..

Wright pointed out that the medical examiner who oversaw Alec's autopsy said the injury could well have happened at 5:30 p.m. because the symptoms of the injury appeared shortly after the attack.

Jenny testified that an injury like Alec's – which she compared to hitting a walnut with a hammer – would cause severe bleeding on and in the brain within 15 minutes and would result in symptoms such as lethargy and coma.

Wright refuted Dold's theory that Kotler might have done it, saying Kotler was in the small apartment with Ogle and her other children, who would have heard something if she had done it. Ogle was the only one who was alone with Alec before his death, and she said the timing matches the evidence.