Tearful Nanny Denies Hurting Baby

Choking back tears on the witness stand, a young British au pair Thursday denied hurting a 9-month-old infant in her charge, saying instead that she tried to revive the baby after finding him gasping in his crib.

A few hours after the infant, Mathew Eappen, was taken to a hospital Feb. 4, police questioned whether Louise Woodward, 19, had been rough with the child because he had been crying all day.

“I said maybe I was not as gentle with him as I could have been,” she said in a soft voice. “What I meant was I was being kind of quicker than usual” because he was fussy.

Police earlier testified that Woodward told them she may have been a little rough with the baby and had tossed him on the bed and on towels on the bathroom floor.

Prosecutors charge that Woodward violently shook Eappen and than slammed the baby’s head against a hard surface, which led to massive brain damage and his death five days later at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Woodward has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges.