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FORENSIC pathologist Dr Easlyn McDonald-Burris on Monday provided harrowing details of the injuries that contributed to the brutal death of six-year-old Sean Luke.
She admitted the boy’s autopsy traumatised her, and, 15 years and hundreds of autopsies later, still had an effect on her.
Mc Donald-Burris spent all of Monday testifying at the trial of the two men – Akeel Mitchell and Richard Chatoo – charged with Luke’s murder sometime between March 25 and 29, 2006.
Luke was sodomised with a sugar cane stalk that ruptured his intestines and internal organs. He died from internal bleeding.
McDonald-Burris’s official conclusion on the cause of death was “internal chest and abdominal injuries and hemorrhage due to a foreign object – a cane stalk – introduced into the body cavity.”
It was under cross-examination by Mitchell’s attorney Mario Merritt that she admitted to reliving the autopsy again when she became aware, from the nightly newscasts, that the trial had started again.
She said she hadn’t listened to the evidence in the case so far because of the effect the autopsy had on her as the pathologist.
“I had been traumatised from this autopsy...I didn’t realise it had so much trauma on me,” she said.
However, she denied assertions by Merritt that she was so traumatised and distracted that she left out what he considered a cause of death based on the findings of Prof Herbert Daisley, that strangulation, or asphyxiation, was a possible cause.
“I was psychologically traumatised, but not distracted. I have a job to do.”
Earlier, she said she tracked the 53-centimetre cane stalk in the child’s body from the anus to the collarbone.
It went through the anus, rectum – perforating it – behind the bladder, through the pelvic and abdominal cavities, perforating the bowel, stomach, and diaphragm, entering the thoracic or chest cavity, perforating the oesophagus and pericardial sac, causing a laceration to the back of the heart and right lung, and ending at the upper border of the right chest cavity, at the level of the collarbone.
McDonald-Burris was taken back to March 28, 2006, when she did the two-hour-long autopsy, using photographs showing the cane stalk along the pathway she described.
When Luke’s body reached her examination table, it was already showing signs of decomposition. Liquid was oozing from the nose, mouth, and anus as part of what pathologists refer to as purging.
Other signs of decomposition on the boys head and face included discolouration and maggots. His fingernails were blue and an upper left incisor – left front tooth – was loose, although she could not say if it was caused by trauma or was a natural occurrence.
On the boy’s body, there were bruises on the lower jaw and two interrupted (or broken) linear red bruises on the neck possibly caused by applying pressure. She said the injury to the face was suggestive of a thumbprint or something pressed into the face and on the neck, a cord, belt, strong, shoelaces, or a hand, could have been used, using mild to moderate force, since Luke was a small child.
There was blood in the cavity containing the lungs and the abdominal cavity was bloodstained.
His stomach contained partly digested food and his last meal would have consisted of rice and carrots. Alcohol was found in the child’s blood.
Blood samples for toxicology and DNA analysis were handed over to the police to be taken for laboratory testing, as well as penile, mouth, and rectal swabs, along with fingernail clippings.
McDonald-Burris said from the degree of decomposition and the maggots she saw, Luke would have been dead for more than 24 hours but not quite 48.
She also said from the injuries caused by the cane stalk being inserted into the body, it would not matter if the boy was bent over or lying down.
“It was the object causing the injuries.”
Using a hypothetical scenario based on her findings, McDonald-Burris said death would have occurred within minutes.
“I don’t think it would be as much as an hour, but several minutes. I didn’t think death was instantaneous.”
Under Merritt’s cross-examination, she was questioned about anatomy and pathology as well as the findings of Prof Daisley, which elicited, “Oh Lord, fadda” from her when his name was first mentioned. She said she did not know Daisley to be a forensic pathologist and defended her findings as opposed to one of his findings, strangulation also as a cause of death.
“No, strangulation was not the cause of death. I have a cause of death and I have one cause of death. Two things together caused the death.”
She said the pressure to the child’s neck was temporary and done to incapacitate him.
Under questioning from Chatoo’s attorney Evans Welch, she said the insertion of the cane stalk was the dramatic feature in the case.
McDonald-Burris, who testified virtually from the Judiciary’s virtual access customer centre in Tobago, said she doesn’t know if she conveyed her feelings about the autopsy to the main police investigator who was present for it, but talked him through her procedure.
She said Luke’s body came to her unclothed and she was aware he was found naked. She also said she would have formed the opinion that what happened with the boy was the action of another human being.
She said the anal swabs were taken because he was found naked with a cane stalk in the anus in order either to conclude or exclude that he was sexually assaulted.
Of the alcohol found in his system, she admitted a six-year-old should not have been ingesting alcohol.
She was also questioned about the wrinkling of the soles of the child’s feet.
One of the State’s main witnesses testified that a group of boys from the Orange Valley, Couva, village went fishing on March 26, when Luke went missing. He was part of the fishing expedition at a river near his home.
Mitchell and Chatoo were identified as the two boys who took Luke into the cane field.
Luke’s body was found in the cane field close to his home two days later.
In response to a question from Welch, McDonald-Burris said dying was a process, not an event, as she described the decomposition process.
Testifying briefly after McDonald-Burris was the police officer who asked for DNA samples from Mitchell and Chatoo. Mitchell’s mother refused the request for blood to be taken from him, while Chatoo’s agreed.
Both men were teenagers at the time of Luke’s murder. Chatoo lived nearby and Mitchell, his cousin, was visiting at the time.
The trial continues on Wednesday. Presiding over the judge-only trial is Justice Lisa Ramsumair-Hinds. Mitchell and Chatoo are represented by attorneys Mario Merritt, Evans Welch, Kirby Joseph, Randall Raphael, Kelston Pope, and Gabriel Hernandez.
State attorneys Sabrina Dougdeen-Jaglal, Anju Bhola, and Sophia Sandy-Smith are prosecuting.
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