Why is Lindsay Clancy in a wheelchair? Duxbury mom charged with killing children

Lindsay Clancy, the Duxbury mother charged with killing her three young children, has appeared in a wheelchair over the course of her murder trial due to injuries she sustained on the night her children died.

The 36-year-old is accused of killing 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan in January 2023. Prosecutors allege Clancy strangled them with exercise bands in the basement of their home while her husband, Patrick Clancy, was out running errands.

Clancy's defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, has argued that she was overmedicated and lacked criminal responsibility due to mental illness, including postpartum depression and psychosis.

Her trial began with jury selection on July 20, and opening statements and witness testimony commenced on July 27. The prosecution called roughly 70 witnesses over the past few weeks, including Patrick Clancy, family friends, police officers, first responders, and medical professionals, before resting its case Monday, Aug. 17.

The defense called its first witnesses Monday, including Allison Ozga, Clancy's sister, and Paula Musgrove, Clancy's mother.

Clancy has been using a wheelchair since early 2023 due to a severe spinal cord injury. She has been held at Tewksbury State Hospital, a 370-bed psychiatric institution, for the past three years.

Why is Lindsay Clancy in a wheelchair?

Clancy jumped from a second-story window at the Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023, the night the children were killed, falling 20 feet to the ground. A wrongful-death lawsuit filed in civil court by Patrick Clancy states she is paralyzed below the sternum.

Police officers and first responders have testified that Clancy was found lying in the backyard of 47 Summer St. that night with lacerations to her neck and wrists, in a state of semiconsciousness.

According to Reddington, there was a "complete transection" of Clancy's spinal cord at T5 and T6 during her fall. Dr. Kelly McDonough, an emergency medicine physician who treated Clancy at South Shore Hospital, said this means the vertebrae, or spinal bones, are "moved apart."

She was brought into the hospital on a backboard with a cervical collar around her neck, McDonough testified.

Peter Blandino of The Patriot Ledger contributed to this report.