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Emergency Line
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The Lowell Sun, March 12, 1992
Woman innocent in infant’s death
By LINDA HERVIEUX Sun Staff
CAMBRIDGE – Middlesex Superior Court Judge Robert A. Barton today found Danielle R. Caron innocent of manslaughter in the shaking death of 7-month-old Laura Cashin of Dracut.
Court Clerk Joseph Marshall announced the verdict at 12:55 this afternoon.
Caron, 26, of Lowell, hugged her lawyer, P. Scott Bratton, and wiped away tears as nearly 30 friends and supporters hugged and cheered in the courtroom. The parents of baby Laura, Robert and Paula Cashin of Dracut, clutched each other briefly, then quickly left the courtroom, flanked by family members. “How?” Paula Cashin whispered as she left the courtroom. The judge’s ruling came after Caron testified in her own defense today, denying that she intended to harm the infant while baby sitting her in Caron’s home on Aug. 30, 1990. Bursting into tears, Caron said she “panicked” after Laura vomited cereal and appeared to choke. “I noticed that the laugh lines around her mouth were blue and that her face was white or gray and her lips were blue,” Caron said, her voice rising. “I picked her up and I put her face in my face and I kept saying her name, telling her to breathe, and I shook her and I turned her upside down and I hit her back and it wasn’t working and I shook her harder,” she sobbed in a rapid-fire voice. Doctors ruled that Laura died from shaken baby syndrome, which prosecutor David E. Meier contends Caron caused by violently shaking the baby over several weeks. Meier has said that Caron considered the baby’s fussing and frequent vomiting an “aggravation.” But when questioned by Meier today, Caron denied that Laura was a problem. When asked by Judge Robert A. Barton whether she had shaken the child “in a violent way” prior to Aug. 30, Caron answered no. Laura Cashin died of massive head injuries on Sept. 3 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She was one of sic children Caron said she baby-sat during the summer of 1990 at her home at 210 Coburn St. in Lowell. Caron and her husband, Richard, have two daughters, Justine, 5, and Renee, 3. During a relentless cross-examination by Meirer, Caron often burst into tears, but maintained that she never intended to harm the baby. When asked why she failed to call an ambulance when the baby appeared in distress, the former Sunday school teacher erupted into tears, saying that as the baby turned blue, “I had visions of another person.” Beckoned by the judge to explain, Caron said: “Eleven years ago, my mother stopped breathing on me. I did the responsible thing. I called the ambulance and when I got off the phone, my mother was dead. “I could not leave the baby in that chair. I had to do something…I shook her. All I wanted her to do was breath.”
The baby gasped, and Caron said she thought the crisis was over and opted to call the baby’s parents, Paula and Robert Cashin, rather than an ambulance.
But when Mrs. Cashin arrived at Caron’s house soon after, she found the baby suffering a seizure. Caron said she offered to call an ambulance at that point, but Paula Cashin insisted on driving the infant to her Chelmsford doctor.
Also this morning, the defense called three character witnesses to testify on Caron’s behalf.
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