An Upper Moreland father who told police he fell on top of his two-month-old daughter has been charged with murder.
After an autopsy was completed, it was determined that the 2-month-old died from "multiple and traumatic injuries," which included massive skull fractures.
"So many skull fractures that, at this point, they haven't all been able to be counted yet," Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said during a news conference this morning.
Two-month-old Makayla Doyle was dead when paramedics arrived at her parents' apartment on Sunday morning. Her forehead was red and swollen and she had bruises and cuts on the bridge of her nose, according to a criminal complaint.
Edward James Doyle, 28, was first charged with Endangering the Welfare of a Child. This morning, the D.A. announced he had also been charged with murdering his daughter.
According to court records, Doyle went out drinking with a neighbor on Saturday night. The neighbor, Paul Sidwell, told police that Doyle was highly intoxicated when the two left the American Legion in Willow Grove, Pa. Doyle came home to the Wellington Apartments on Horsham Road, around 3 a.m. on Sunday and played cards with some friends.
Then Doyle, his wife and Sidwell went to Sidwell's apartment down the hall, where the Doyles got into an argument over their taxes. Doyle told police he went back home where the couple's two-month-old daughter, Makayla and their 15-month-old daughter, Mackenzie, were sleeping.
According to the Affidavit of Probable Cause,
"Doyle said Makayla began to cry so he removed her from the baby swing and cradled her in his arms. Doyle said he walked toward the kitchen and hit the leg of the baby swing. He said this caused him to fall forward and land on top of Makayla's body as he struck the floor."
Doyle told investigators he gave his daughter a pacifier at 7:15 and he thought she took it, but he was "groggy" at the time. He called 911 when he woke up two hours later and found Makayla in her swing, "white as a ghost" and "limp."
During the news conference, Ferman said that after receiving the results of the pathologists report, there was "no doubt that this [murder charges] was the appropriate course of action."
Doyle was arraigned just before 11 a.m.
