Pastor’s daughter, 6, killed after shard of badminton racket breaks off and pierces her skull in freak accident

An American family’s vacation turned tragic when a shard of a badminton racket broke off and pierced their 6-year-old daughter’s skull, killing her.

Little Lucy Morgan died Wednesday, June 5, four days after the shocking freak accident on what was supposed to be an idyllic lakeside trip in Maine.

The tragedy unfolded Saturday as the Morgan family of sux from New Jersey, USA, enjoyed their last full day at their rental cottage in Limerick, Maine, according to her father Jesse Morgan, a pastor at Green Pond Bible Chapel in Rockaway.

“We were eating a quick lunch by the lake and the kids decided to try badminton in the front yard. Bethany and I were relaxing in the back when we heard screaming,” Morgan wrote in a blog entry titled “Calamity Strikes.”

“Due to a freak accident with a racquet that broke on a downward swing, a sharp piece had entered Lucy’s skull while she was sitting on the sideline and caused catastrophic injury.”

According to Maine State Police, she had received the “unintentional injury from her 10-year-old brother.”

The aluminum shaft of the racket had dislodged from its wooden handle, causing the shaft to strike the girl through her head, investigators ruled.

Lucy was breathing, but unresponsive as emergency services rushed her to a local hospital, which airlifted the injured girl to Maine Medical Center in Portland, according to Maine State Police.

She was taken directly into the operating room, where surgeons removed part of her skull to relieve pressure.

Doctors were successful in reviving the young girl, but Lucy had lost all brain function and the full ability to breathe on her own and had to supported by oxygen tanks.

Doctors warned the family the little girl had “a very slim chance” of recovery to being a normal girl as the penetration of the racket shaft was very deep into her brain and caused immediate arterial bleeds, Morgan explained.

The little girl succumbed to her injuries around 4 a.m. Wednesday, one day after she was predicted to die.

“Every time I looked into the rearview mirror, wishing I saw Lucy munching on some chicken nuggets after we stopped at Wendy’s and only ordered for 5,” Morgan wrote about making the long 350-mile drive back to their New Jersey home without Lucy.

According to Morgan, Lucy’s siblings Silas, 10, Shiloh, 8, and Atticus, 4, are struggling to comprehend the loss and are tragically “blaming themselves and taking it hard.”

The brother who accidentally caused the fatal injury asked his grieving parents “how we could ever be happy again,” according to his father’s blog.

“We just sat on the front steps for a while crying until I finally mustered up the courage to open the door. We again collapsed in a pile on the kitchen floor crying harder as a family than we ever have,” Morgan wrote.

Her funeral will be held June 15 at her father’s church.