LACROSSE, Wis. — A forensic pathologist testified that a blunt force killed a Holmen man whose wife, Lori Ann Phillips, now of Winona, is trial on a murder charge. Ross Reichard sad that blunt-force trauma occurs when flat object strikes tissue. It’s striking something that is relatively flat, like falling and hitting your head on the sidewalk, or your head hitting the windshield of a car, he said. Phillips is accused of driving a pickup truck into her husband on the driveway of their Holmen home, then driving off, spending the next few hours elsewhere, then telling police that she found him dead the next morning in a snowbank on the driveway. This was in 2019. Reichard said that the husband, Mark Phillips, also had rib fractures and lost a liter of blood. It was established that alcohol factored into his death.
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Reichard. Expert opinion: Death due to blunt force trauma.