“She wasn’t listening to instructions. She was having big fits. We taped it with scotch tape … She is dead ”, dropped, in his childish voice, the little brother of the girl from Granby. The jury, in the trial of the mother-in-law who is accused of second degree murder and forcible confinement, heard the boy’s poignant confidences made to the police on the day of the tragedy.
The child did not answer questions from lawyers at the Trois-Rivières courthouse on Wednesday. Only his interview with the police, filmed on the day of the tragedy, was shown to the 14 members of the jury.
The boy, then 5, repeated repeatedly in the 43-minute recording that his sister was dead. He also recounted, in a sometimes rambling speech, that his sister had “gone outside” while he was asleep.
“My sister opened the window. She went outside. It woke up my mom […]. It woke me up too, ”said the boy, sitting in an armchair that was too big for his small size. He did not specify when this event occurred. Two witnesses, the victim’s half-brother and neighbor, however, told earlier in the trial that the girl tried to escape on the night of April 28 to 29, 2019.
Throughout his interview with the investigator, the boy strokes a black Labernois, a support dog of the Sûreté du Québec. “I loved her very, very much, my sister. I wanted her to apologize to me […] and my mom for opening the window. Not to listen to what we say. To have seizures, ”explained the boy.
In a heartbreaking passage, he said he was in the kitchen when help arrived. “She was no longer speaking. There the ambulances arrived, after a police. They were told: ‘She doesn’t speak anymore. We must take care of it, quickly. We have to wake her up. It must be healed for it to be alive. “”
Simon Guérard, the Sûreté du Québec investigator, then asked the child: “How did it end? ”
“It’s over,” he replied. “It makes me cry,” he continued after a few seconds of pause.
“She was tied like that”
Like his half-brother, who indicated that the victim was like a “mummy” under several layers of duct tape, the 5-year-old also indicated that his sister had been “tied with scotch tape” . It was not the first time that she was placed in restraint, he revealed.
The boy said he saw duct tape on the girl’s feet, legs and stomach. He tied his hands together behind her back, saying “she was tied like that”. Then, at the very end of the interview, when the investigator asked him if the victim had duct tape elsewhere on his body, he replied: “yes, on his head”, pointing to the policeman’s forehead. “It had come down to her mouth. ”
In cross-examination, Prosecutor Me Pénélope Provencher also insisted on the formulation of the policeman’s question. “Tell me about her mouth when the tape was on her head?” The investigator asked the 5-year-old. The lawyer questioned the policeman, also a witness in this trial, as to whether this question was leading.
“I wanted to position the mouth in relation to the scotch tape. I put a part of the body in perspective in relation to what [l’enfant] just described me, ”he replied.
Thursday, investigator Francis Boily-Martineau will present the calls and text messages that were exchanged from the accused’s cell phone. The 38-year-old is suspected of having duct tape wrapped around the 7-year-old victim, the Crown’s contention claims.