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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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