Doctor suspected abuse in girl’s death

Tuesday, April 27, 1999 | 10:32 a.m.

The doctor who tried to save the life of a 2-year-old North Las Vegas girl told a District Court jury that her injuries were more consistent with child abuse than the family's claims that she had choked on something.

Dr. Jay Fisher, who helped establish the pediatric emergency services unit at University Medical Center, was on duty Dec. 13, 1997, when Yazmine Dorum was brought into the emergency room showing no signs of life.

"Her pupils were so dilated -- which shows a lack of normal neurological activity -- that they occupied almost the entire colored area of the eye," Fisher testified Monday in the murder trial of Emory Nelson Slayden, the 27-year-old boyfriend of Yazmine's mother, Sandy Dorum.

The prosecution is winding down its case, which began last Wednesday. It could go to the jury as early as this week.

Fisher said that after 25 minutes of resuscitation efforts he pronounced Yazmine dead and then started to consider child abuse as a cause because the death was not consistent with what had been told to paramedics -- that the child had lain down, choked and vomited.

"Soon after, it (the circumstances of her death) began very quickly not to match that the child choked," Fisher said under direct examination by Deputy District Attorney Vicki Monroe.

"Choking is an extremely dramatic event. There would be severe fighting for a last breath, not just a vomiting noise and not breathing. It wouldn't be that way at all."

Fisher said when he told Sandy Dorum and Slayden that the child had died, the woman screamed and fell to the floor while Slayden sobbed.

He testified that they repeated the story about how the 37-pound toddler had choked.

Fisher further testified that the injuries were more consistent with the prosecution's theory that the child's head was smashed into a door. He said vomiting is consistent with a head injury.

It also is alleged that the girl had been slammed into walls, thrown onto her bed and forced to take cold showers.

Under cross-examination by Deputy Special Public Defender Peter LaPorta, Fisher said medical evidence could not confirm whether the child's fatal injuries occurred close to 10:30 p.m. when a 911 call was made or earlier in the evening, between 6 and 8 p.m.

According to reports of the incident, Slayden had finished work and was home a half-hour before the frantic call was made to paramedics seeking help after the girl had stopped breathing. Before that, the girl was with her mother.

Monroe has portrayed Slayden as a domineering man who had mistreated the children of at least two other girlfriends in the past five years.

In testimony at a preliminary hearing last year in North Las Vegas Justice Court, the girl's 21-year-old mother said Slayden was angry when he arrived home and took Yazmine into the bathroom with him for a cold shower as punishment for wetting her pants earlier in the day.

She testified that when she entered the bathroom moments later, the girl already was slumped unconscious against the side of the bathtub. Yazmine stopped breathing a short time later and Slayden called 911, the mother said.