NEWPORT — Two doctors testified to the same conclusion Friday in the bail hearing for Rachin McCoy: the injuries that killed six-week-old Naiomi McCoy were too severe to come from a fall, especially one of less than 10 feet.

Rachin McCoy, 21, of Newport is charged with first-degree murder in Naiomi’s death, which officials said was caused by fatal child-abuse syndrome with blunt force injuries to the head. He has been held without bail since his arrest in January.

Dr. Christine Barron, a child-abuse pediatrician at Hasbro Children’s Hospital was called in when Naiomi was transferred to the hospital from Newport Hospital. An initial examination showed severe injuries, including bleeding in her brain, Barron said.

“The injuries I’ve described — brain injury, wide skull fractures, retinal hemorrhaging — require significant force,” Barron testified. “This is not from a fall from a couch, or even a fall from 6 or 10 feet. These are the injuries you see in high-speed motor-vehicle accidents, in child abuse and in falls from 3 or 5 stories [from a building].”

State medical examiner Dr. Alexander Chirkov testified that in his Jan. 31 autopsy of Naiomi, he found fresh fractures on 17 of her ribs, and 5 older, healed rib fractures.

In the days after Naiomi’s death, McCoy told a cousin and a police detective that he had been standing on a couch in their Festival Field apartment throwing the child in the air playfully when he missed and dropped her on the floor. The police said in that situation, Naiomi would have been more than 7 feet off the ground.

Using photographs from the autopsy, Chirkov explained that Naiomi had irregularly shaped blue bruising on the left side of her skull, behind her ear and toward the back of her head. She had two skull fractures, one on each side of her head. The fracture on the left side of her head was severe enough to cause blood and brain matter to accumulate between Naiomi’s skull and her scalp, something that does not happen in all skull fractures, Chirkov testified.

Barron testified that Naiomi’s pupils were “fixed and dialated,” a sign of brain injury, and that the child was so unstable that she couldn’t even turn her to examine her more thoroughly.

There was also damage to the nerves in both of Naiomi’s eyes, as well as retinal hemorrhaging, another sign of severe injury, Chirkov testified.

Newport Police Department Det. Kevin Sullivan, who continued a portion of his testimony Friday afternoon, said that during McCoy’s interview with the police early on Jan. 28, he offered more details about what he’d done after he picked Naiomi up after dropping her.

Sullivan testified that McCoy told him he tried to get a blanket to wrap the baby in and tossed her from the couch to a crib or changing table. The hearing will continue at 11 a.m. on Monday.

tbuford@projo.com