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A 16-month-old girl whose death has been under police investigation since August died from blunt impact to her head, a pathologist concluded.

But he could not determine whether the injury was due to an accident or homicide.

The autopsy report by the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office detailed the injury of Emily Ann Mays, who died after being placed in state foster care.

"This child's death is due to a nonnatural and violent cause," wrote forensic pathologist Eric D. Peters in the Nov. 18 report, released Friday.

"After a thorough review of the medical records, police reports, witness statements, and a complete autopsy examination, it is unclear if the injuries suffered were homicidal or accidental," Peters wrote.

Police have been investigating the death since August but had not revealed the autopsy results. Within the past week police reclassified the death investigation as a homicide investigation, said Sgt. Ramon Batista, a Tucson Police Department spokesman.

He said the reclassification was based on all available information, but would not say whether any of it had been obtained since the pathologist's review.

The brown-haired girl had been removed from her mother's care and placed in a foster home on the Southeast Side for less than one month when she died.

The blunt-force trauma to the head caused a subdural hemorrhage, an accumulation of blood between the brain and its outer layer. The child also had scrapes and bruises on the scalp and face, but no fractures. She had some abrasions and bruising on her body and extremities, but without underlying vital injuries, the report said.

No one has been charged in her death.

Attempts to reach the infant's family through her mother's attorney and through the advocacy group Homicide Survivors were unsuccessful Friday.

In August, a statement released by the family expressed shock and disbelief over the girl's death.

"Who was supposed to be watching her? We want these people held accountable," the family said.

Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, said the girl's death and the death last month of a baby boy in foster care here show kids are "paying the price of panic" that led the state in recent years to emphasize removing kids from their homes in suspected cases of child abuse or neglect.

"The parent who will actually kill a child is a needle in a haystack," he said. "You can't find that case by trying to vacuum up the entire haystack."