A jury trial in Butler County Common Pleas Court into alleged child abuse charges against a 28-year-old Butler man will resume Wednesday after the child's mother along with a pediatrician and a Butler Township police officer testified Tuesday.

Jaime J. Rivera, 28, is facing felony charges of aggravated assault of a victim under 6 years old by a defendant 18 years or older and endangering the welfare of children, and misdemeanor charges of simple assault and recklessly endangering another person and summary harassment in the case. He is free on unsecured bond.

The mother, Jessica Fair, 28, testified that Rivera had been living with her and her two children for a month at the Thompson Greene Apartments in the township when the incident occurred in July 2019.

On July 25, she said she picked up her then 14-month-old daughter and her then 5-year-old son from day care after work and then played with the girl outside with Rivera.

She said she put her daughter to bed at 8 p.m., but the child began fussing when she put her son to bed about an hour later.

Rivera took the girl to bed with him, and Fair fell asleep with her son, she said.

The next morning, Fair said she changed her daughter out of the clothes she had been wearing the day before and noticed bruises on both sides of the child's torso under her arms and another bruise on her right thigh.

She said Rivera told her that, during the early morning hours, the girl pulled his tool bag off of a night stand and the bag fell on her, and a table also fell on her while he was playing a video game.

Fair said those bruises were in addition to some existing scratches on her face that a cat caused, some bruises on her forehead from falling at her aunt's house, and a scratch under one eye that the girl caused with her fingernails.

She said her mother drove her and her daughter to MedExpress, but the staff told her to take the girl to UPMC Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh. After taking the girl to the hospital, Fair said she relayed Rivera's account about how the torso and leg bruises occurred to staff and told them about the pre-existing injuries.

During an exchange of text messages throughout the day, Fair said Rivera apologized and said the tool bag was heavy. In one message, Rivera told Fair she should have waited until the bruises healed before taking the girl to a doctor because the injuries could be deemed abuse, she said.

She said she responded saying she was worried that the girl's bruised leg might have been broken.

The messages also revealed the hospital didn't believe Fair's account of how the injuries occurred, and she was talking to someone from Children and Youth Services, she said. Fair said she was worried her daughter might be taken from her.

She said initially she believed Rivera's account of how the torso and leg bruises occurred.

Dr. Jennifer Wolford, the pediatrician who treated the girl at the hospital, said during virtual testimony that Fair's account of the pre-existing injuries and the torso and leg bruises did not adequately explain how they occurred.

“The number of bruises is extraordinary on this child. This child is too young to have this number of bruises,” Wolford said.

The areas under the arms and on the side of the thigh are protected areas that don't get injured during an accident fall, Wolford said.

She said those bruises on the torso and leg were multiple bruises that coalesced together. Those injuries could not have been caused by a falling tool bag and were not caused by accidents from play, she said.

In her opinion, Wolford said those injuries were inflicted by an adult and would have been painful to the toddler.

In addition to those injuries, the girl had a swollen bruise across the bridge of her nose, a scratch on her face, scratches on her ears and small bruises on her forehead, Wolford said. She said she found faint bruises around the girl's knee and found a scratch on her foot.

She said that Fair and her mother attributed those injuries to the girl climbing and falling, being clumsy and being scratched by a cat, but that those explanations don't adequately explain how the injuries occurred. In her report, Wolford said she concluded that the girl was a victim of violence.

Butler Township Police officer Justin Welton said he talked to Rivera on the phone July 26, 2019, and he came to the police station with a written statement. He agreed to be interviewed on camera and wrote another statement at the station, Welton said.

The interview recorded on camera was played for the jury, which consists of nine women and five men. Two of the women are alternates. Photos of the injured girl were also displayed for the jury.

He said Rivera told him that he tried to wake up Fair after the tool bag and night stand fell on the girl, but she didn't wake up, so he went to bed cuddling the girl.

Rivera told him he fell asleep while playing a video game when he heard a crashing sound, Welton said. He said Rivera reported that he woke up and saw the toddler lying on the floor with a tool bag near her leg and a chair knocked over.

“Never in my life would I hurt a child,” Rivera said in the recorded interview.