Mom Testifies in Cummings Retrial : Crime: She tearfully tells of losing her child as former PTA president once more faces a jury in the 1990 death of a baby she was caring for.

Her testimony occasionally interrupted by tears, Toni Majoy-Young recounted in Van Nuys Superior Court how she frantically drove her unconscious baby son to the hospital just hours after she’d left him at a baby-sitter’s house.

“I was screaming at him the entire time I was in the car,” Young told a jury on Monday. “I said, ‘Kevin, wake up. It’s Mom. Wake up! Wake up!’ And he never did. He didn’t do anything.”

Majoy-Young was the first witness to testify in the retrial of former PTA president Debra Suzanne Cummings, charged with second-degree murder in the death of 9-month-old Kevin Young, who lost consciousness while Cummings cared for him four years ago.

Although Kevin had been teething and vomiting the previous two weeks, Majoy-Young recalled how happy he had seemed the night before he was hospitalized, playing with toys and balloons in the living room of their home. She said he was “alive and well” when she left him at Cummings’ Reseda home the morning of June 15, 1990.

At 2:30 p.m., Majoy-Young said, she was called away from work by Cummings, who said Kevin had had an accident and should be taken to his doctor. He died the next day in the intensive care unit of Valley Presbyterian Hospital, his skull fractured and his brain swelling from pressure caused by his injuries.

“We actually pulled the plug at 5:15,” Majoy-Young testified. Then she broke into tears.

Despite its emotional beginning, the trial is likely to focus on more clinical matters.

In their opening statements, Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol Fisch and defense attorney Tamar Rachel Toister indicated that expert medical testimony will play a crucial role in the case.

Fisch said that the medical testimony and other circumstantial evidence will point to Cummings.

“This is a circumstantial evidence case,” Fisch told jurors. “Keep in mind that every piece of circumstantial evidence will throw a web around the defendant and prove her guilt.”

But Toister told the jury that evidence will show that some of Kevin’s injuries had already begun to heal, showing they were inflicted before Kevin was entrusted that day to Cummings, his regular baby-sitter. She added that experts have found that 90% of all child abuse happens at home.

“The defense is going to be that this injury . . . did not occur at the hands of Debra Cummings,” Toister said. “It did not occur at the home of Debra Cummings and it did not occur while Debra Cummings was the caretaker of this child.”

Toister said that in some cases, symptoms of head injuries do not appear for hours, or even days. The presence of collagen--knitting skin fibers--near the injury, as well as chocolate-colored clotted blood, indicated an older injury, Toister said.

Fisch argued, however, that doctors who examined Kevin before and immediately after his death found no evidence of older injuries.

She said the back of his skull was fractured in two places and a large blood clot had formed under the fractures. His abdomen and intestines also were bruised, she said. Doctors will testify that the injuries appeared fresh, Fisch said.

Cummings told police and Majoy-Young that Kevin apparently hit his head against a coffee table while playing with Cummings’ 2-year-old nephew, the prosecutor said, but the prosecution’s medical experts will testify that a fall against a coffee table could not cause such extensive injuries.

Majoy-Young testified that when she arrived at Cummings’ house, about 2:55 p.m. and found her son unconscious, “I asked her what happened and she told me she didn’t really know because she was in the kitchen making a bottle and didn’t really see what happened.”

She said Cummings was holding Kevin against her left shoulder. She was too frightened to touch the boy herself.

“He didn’t look like he was sleeping to me,” Majoy-Young said. “He looked like something was wrong.”

She testified that Cummings discouraged her from dialing 911, saying it would be quicker for Majoy-Young to drive Kevin to the hospital herself. Cummings strapped the unconscious child into his car seat, Majoy-Young said.

The medical testimony begins today.

At Cummings’ first trial two years ago, jurors deadlocked 7 to 5 in favor of acquittal after eight days of contentious deliberations.