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HARRISVILLE -- Jayde McDonnell's father, Gannon McDonnell, began his testimony as the defense takes over in the Aaron Trout Trial.
Trout faces murder and child abuse charges for the alleged killing of 2-year-old Jayde McDonnell, the child of Trout's then-girlfriend Adrienne Pavelka and Gannon McDonnell.
Gannon McDonnell was called up to speak by Trout's attorney Bill Pfeifer where he was asked several questions about both his relationship with Pavelka and numerous statements he has made about her to law enforcement during the investigation into Jayde McDonnell's death.
During his testimony, McDonnell was asked by Pfeifer about statements he made regarding Pavelka's treatment of the kids to the Michigan State Police during the investigations.
While McDonnell claims that he didn't remember a lot of things that he said, he did recall an incident in which he claims Pavelka hit one of her other daughters.
"There was an incident where she had hit Renee," Gannon McDonnell said to Pfeifer during his testimony.
McDonnell alleges that while he was smoking outside of his residence he heard a commotion inside, and when he entered, he saw Pavelka's oldest daughter Renee on the ground with a red mark on her back with Pavelka in the room.
McDonnell does make it clear, however, that he hadn't seen Pavelka strike the child.
McDonnell largely claimed that he didn't remember his statements to the law enforcement during the investigation, and when he was presented with a copy of a state trooper summary of their conversations, he claimed that what was written did reflect what he believed that they had spoken about at the time.
With this being the cause, McDonnell's testimony was halted so he could go over some recordings of his conversations with state police to see if they would jog his memory.
Since the recordings were deemed inadmissible in court as evidence, other witnesses were called up and McDonnell's testimony was pushed back to give him time to watch the videos away from the jury.
In addition to McDonnell's testimony, the defense also called up Pavelka and her brother-in-law Ricky Fultz to answer questions to further clarify the timeline surrounding Jayde McDonnell's death.
The prosecution also concluded their proof with the completion of testimony by Anthony Utt, a detective sergeant of the Michigan State Police-Alpena Post regarding his interviews with Pavelka.
Gannon McDonnell's testimony was scheduled to continue this morning.