The girl from Granby died of “external suffocation”, concluded the pathologist who performed the autopsy on the “very thin” body of the 7-year-old child. “External suffocation is the nose and mouth that are blocked,” explained Dr.D Caroline Tanguay to the 14 jurors in the trial of the child’s mother-in-law, Tuesday.
The examinations that the doctor carried out on the remains and the toxicological analyzes did not reveal the causes of death. The DD Tanguay had to examine the context surrounding the girl’s death. “What I was given as information was that she was contented or that she would have had duct tape on her body at first, and on her nose and mouth afterwards. With the autopsy findings that I have […], I come to the conclusion that the cause of death is external suffocation, ”said the expert.
Crown prosecutors have been trying to prove, for three weeks, that the mother-in-law wrapped the girl in duct tape. The 38-year-old is charged with second degree murder and forcible confinement.
The DD Caroline Tanguay reported that the child was “very thin” and very small at the time of her death. Photos of the girl, unconscious on her hospital bed, were also presented to the jury. Despite her extreme thinness, the pathologist ruled out that the child was suffering from a chronic illness.
The girl presented “anomalies”
According to the observations of the DD Tanguay, the girl was “very thin in terms of the face and limbs”. His delay was “significant” both in terms of his height and weight. Thus, she presented “anomalies” at the level of certain organs, she added, without however specifying the nature of these.
The girl was only 1.02m tall at the time of her death. Thus, it was “below 0.1% [des enfants] for greatness ”. She weighed 36 lbs, which placed her between the 0 and 3 percentiles, according to the pathologist.
According to reports, the girl born prematurely at almost 36 weeks had caught up with her birth weight loss. Up to 3 years, it was thus between the 15e and 50e percentiles for height. But in the spring of 2017 – around the age of 5 – she was close to the 0 percentile for height. “She no longer follows her growth curves”, observed the expert.
The DD Tanguay noticed fractures to the girl’s rib cage dating from a few days before her death. The doctor said, however, that because of the child’s “low bone density”, the latter may not have felt the injury.
In the photos, the jury also observed some minor marks on the victim’s body, including “erosion” on his right side and “erosion” on the hand. “We do not have a fracture of the lower and upper limbs,” testified the pathologist.