After five hours of deliberation, an eight-woman, four-man McDonald County jury found a former Anderson woman guilty of second-degree involuntary manslaughter Friday in the 2005 death of her 6-year-old daughter.
Karen Chandler, 33, of Rogers, Ark., formerly Karen Davenport, was fined $5,000 after jurors could not find her guilty of first-degree involuntary manslaughter in the Jan. 29, 2005, death of her daughter, Hannah Davenport.
Chandler and her mother, Linda Walsham of Neosho, were accused of failing to obtain and / or maintain health care for Hannah, who suffered from a birth defect that made it difficult for her to have bowel movements or to digest many foods.
In a probable cause affidavit filed in February 2005, former McDonald County Chief Deputy Gregg Sweeten alleged a caller told 911 dispatchers on Jan. 29, 2005, that a child was unconscious and not breathing at Chandler’s home in Anderson.
Ambulance workers said they found Walsham and one of the girl’s uncles performing CPR on Hannah when they arrived and rescuers believed they had a faint pulse on the girl. Hannah Davenport was taken to Goodman, where a hospital helicopter was waiting to take her to Joplin’s Freeman West Hospital.
However, the girl was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
According to testimony from Dr. Keith Norton, a medical examiner with the Greene County Medical Examiner’s Office in Springfield, the girl suffered from dehydration and bowel infections before she died. He said if she’d gotten medical attention in what was to be her final days, or even hours, she might have lived. Hannah Davenport died from a perforated colon, according to testimony. Former McDonald County Prosecutor Steve Geeding noted that at the time of her death, Hannah Davenport weighed 27 pounds and stood 3-feet-4.
However, a defense witness, Dr. Thomas Young, a forensic pathologist from Kansas City who reviewed the autopsy report, said the child’s death was caused by complications from the birth defect, and was no one’s fault.
Charges against Walsham were dropped earlier this year by McDonald County Prosecutor Janice Durbin due to lack of evidence.
The case has been in the courts for five years, with attorney changes on both sides. Durbin dropped original manslaughter charges filed by Geeding, then filed second-degree murder charges against the women in 2007. The murder charges were later dropped.
Chandler was represented by Frank Yankoviz, a Monett attorney.
