AUGUSTA — A former Wayne man has been indicted on charges that he seriously injured his infant son last October by throwing him down stairs.

The indictment against William Goodhue Lord Jr., 40, now of Yarmouth, was handed up Friday by the Kennebec County grand jury.

Lord was arrested last October after a police standoff in Wayne.

The indictment charges him with aggravated assault, domestic violence assault on a child less than 6 years old, domestic violence terrorizing and endangering the welfare of a child, all on Oct. 19, 2014, in Wayne.

The child, Preston Lord, is named as the victim in all the charges except the terrorizing one. That charge says Lord threatened to murder the child’s mother, Ericka Melanson, 21.

An indictment is not a determination of guilt, but it indicates that there is enough evidence to proceed with formal charges and a trial.

Melanson told police Lord was highly intoxicated and had been depressed about the loss of his job when he threw Preston, “who was not secured in a child safety seat, down a set of stairs. Baby Preston got ejected from the seat and landed face-first,” according to information in a court affidavit filed by Maine State Police Trooper Dane Wing. At the time, Preston was 3 months old.

“It is our understanding from the baby’s mother that the baby has thankfully made a full recovery,” District Attorney Maeghan Maloney said via email on Tuesday. “This is a very serious case that is being handled by our new sexual assault/domestic violence unit and being given the extra attention that it needs.”

Maloney has assigned assistant district attorneys Frayla Schoenfeld and Kristin Murray-James to that unit full time and David Spencer half time. Spencer also is the prosecutor in the veterans court.

Lord, a registered nurse, was fired from his job at Riverview Psychiatric Center after a review of an incident at the state hospital in which a forensic patient, Arlene M. Edson, now 30, was pepper-sprayed and left for hours in restraints with the irritating substance on her skin despite the fact that she was compliant and not threatening the staff.

Lord signed off on the use of pepper spray by a state corrections officer working at the Augusta facility.

He appears to be the only one who lost his job as a result of the incident. The hospital reported the incident to state regulators on Feb. 27, 2014, about three months after it had occurred, and state regulators investigated it. The Maine Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed that Lord no longer works at Riverview, but did not provide any dates of employment.

Edson herself was indicted by the same grand jury on two charges of assault at the hospital that allegedly occurred Dec. 3-4, 2014.

Betty Adams can be contacted at 621-5631 or at:

badams@centralmaine.com

Twitter: betadams