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ROCKLAND, Maine — The lawyer for a Louisiana man accused in the May 29, 2024, death of 22-month-old Quayshawn Wilson in Owls Head has asked the court to suppress any evidence gathered from the seizure of cellphones and a suspected blood-stained pillowcase.
A hearing on the motion to suppress is scheduled for Sept. 18 in the state court in Knox County.
Aziayh Scott, 24, remains in custody following his arrest in June 2024 on a charge of manslaughter in connection to the death of Wilson.
An autopsy performed on the child by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Augusta ruled the cause of the child’s death was blunt force trauma, specifically a severely lacerated liver.
In his motion to suppress evidence, Scott’s defense attorney, Christopher MacLean, said the Maine State Police seized Scott’s cellphone on May 30 when they came to the apartment that he, Wilson and the boy’s mother were renting on Ingraham Drive in Owls Head. Police then filed a request for a warrant to search the phone on May 31. Police also seized the cellphone of the child’s mother on May 30 but sought the search warrant on May 31.
The attorney argues that the police did not have probable cause to seize the items and seized them from the residence before obtaining a court order.
The defense is also asking that any evidence gathered from a pillowcase with a red stain be suppressed. That pillowcase was also seized during the May 30 visit by police at the Owls Head residence.
Scott has pleaded not guilty.
The child’s mother, Shaneka Washington, submitted a letter to the court on Nov. 13, 2024. She said the state is falsely accusing an innocent man.
“I have significant concerns about how my son’s case is being handled,” Washington stated in the letter.
She said the assistant attorney general prosecuting the case has constructed her case based on circumstantial evidence and misrepresentations of text messages between herself and Scott. Washington claims her son was not feeling well on the day that he died or on the prior day.
“This critical context has been overlooked, and it is deeply upsetting to me,” she told the court in the letter.
“From the moment of my son’s passing, my family and I were treated as suspects, which prevented us from properly grieving. We were questioned at the hospital during a time of profound sorrow, and this continued without legal counsel for an extended period. Our civil rights were violated, as we felt compelled to surrender our phones under threat of being evicted from our home,” Washington claims in her letter.
After going to the residence in Owls Head to question them further the day after seizing the items, detectives learned that the couple had returned to Louisiana.
Scott was arrested June 5 in Louisiana on a warrant issued from Knox County. He was extradited to Maine on July 18 and remains in jail. Justice Jeffrey Hjelm agreed in October to reduce Scott’s bail from $150,000 cash to $50,000 but required him to remain in Knox County. The defense had sought to reduce bail to $7,500 and allow him to live with his parents in Louisiana.
The couple and child had come to Maine a day before the child’s death. The mother is a traveling certified nursing assistant.
On May 29, Thomaston police reported that the mother had gone into a store and upon her return found the child unresponsive in their car. A nurse who was walking by initially performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation, followed by a Thomaston police officer and then Thomaston Emergency Medical Services.
Scott had been watching the boy the day he died. Scott told police the boy was fine and they walked hand in hand to the car to pick up the boy’s mother from work and then went to Walmart. Scott had sent a video to the mother of the boy dancing that afternoon.
The state had said that a neighbor, however, recalled seeing Scott carrying the child to the car and the boy’s head was leaning back in an awkward way. However, defense attorney MacLean said at an earlier hearing that the neighbor originally said the child appeared to be asleep, but then police asked a leading question to get that answer.
The child had no old injuries that would indicate prior abuse.
MacLean said at an earlier bail hearing that inappropriately strong cardio-pulmonary resuscitation may have led to the boy’s injuries, a suggestion contested by the prosecution.
Prosecuting the case are Assistant Attorneys General Jennifer Ackerman and Leanne Robbin.
MacLean said videos will show that the cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on the child was inappropriate and may have caused the injury.
Ackerman said the autopsy concluded CPR would not have caused such severe injury to the liver.
She also cited telephone calls and texts from Scott to the boy’s mother that she said were efforts to get the child’s mother to speak to the police. MacLean said the state was reading something into those calls that was not there and that Scott maintained his innocence in those calls.
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.