The stepfather of a 19-month-old girl admitted in a videotaped confession that he choked her and also pushed her face under water in a bathtub because he could not control his frustration and anger when she cried.
Gregory Brian Gamble’s defense attorney, Richard Kingston, said Gamble was young and inexperienced at child rearing. Kingston called the choking, borne out by forensic photographs of the child’s injuries, “this so-called choking incident” during testimony in the second day of Gamble’s attempted first-degree murder trial.
Kingston said Gamble never intended to kill the child.
Dr. Michelle Williams, the hospital emergency room physician who examined the girl after the alleged choking incident, testified Thursday the child had both old and new bruises around her throat, partly under the jaw line.
She said one of the bruises appeared to have been caused by squeezing the child’s throat with moderate pressure within the previous 12 hours and the other could be from one to three days old.
The videotaped interview was shown to the jury in Judge Jane Eikleberry’s courtroom Thursday.
The alleged incidents took place last summer when he was a 19-year-old an airman living in military housing at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
The trial continues Friday at 10:30 a.m.