John O’Keefe did not sustain fatal injuries to the back of his head on the lawn where Karen Read discovered him the morning after prosecutors claimed she accidentally struck him with her Lexus SUV and left him in a snowstorm, as per a defense expert’s statement.

“If someone falls backward onto a flat surface, the scalp tear often resembles a star because the impact concentrates on one area, leading to a star-like tearing pattern,” explained Dr. Elizabeth Laposata while referring to an evidence photo not shown in the courthouse video feed.

“Additionally, you wouldn’t typically see distinct vertical scraping on the skin. If someone fell backward on grass, you might find grass in the wound or see an irregular crisscross pattern in the flattened grass. However, that’s not evident in Mr. O’Keefe’s case,” she stated.

She said he must’ve hit his head on an uneven surface.

Karen Read arrives at Norfolk County Superior Court, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. Read is charged with killing her Boston police officer boyfriend by intentionally driving her SUV into him. (Hans Pennink for Fox News Digital)

Laposata is a forensic pathologist and professor at Brown University’s medical school, whom Jackson described as “absolutely peerless,” although she resigned from her prior role as Rhode Island’s chief medical examiner amid an audit that found her office let hundreds of incomplete autopsies languish under her watch, according to local reports from the time.

She returned to the stand once jurors arrived, and she explained the internal injuries to O’Keefe’s brain and said pressure on the brain stem from internal swelling and bleeding as a result of the fracture is what killed him.

The cut over his right eye, however, was caused by a different impact. She said it did not appear to have been inflicted by the spoiler on the back of Read’s SUV.