Lachie Jones inquest: Paediatrician says face-up drowning ‘unusual’
Tuesday, 13 August 2024
A Starship Hospital paediatrician says the fact Lachie Jones was found face up, with no water in his lungs and in shallow water was ‘’unusual’’.
Dr Carmen Basu gave evidence on Tuesday at the inquest into the death of Lachie Jones, who was found dead late on the evening of January 29, 2019, face up in a council wastewater pond near his home in Gore.
Police quickly concluded the boy had drowned but later confessed they had “missed some steps” in the investigation.
Basu is a general paediatrician who works in the children’s emergency department at Starship Hospital and also runs a private practice which specialises in the first 1000 days of life.
She said statistically it was most likely Lachie drowned, but the presence of an inflicted injury could not confidently be excluded because the head was not opened during the autopsy.
Basu said Lachie’s apparent drowning in shallow water, the fact his lungs were not full of water and he was found in a face up position were the most unusual aspects medically in this case.
In her written evidence, Basu wrote that Lachie was found in 30cm of water, but evidence given on Tuesday morning by Gore District Council 3 Waters manager Aaron Green would indicate that it was closer to 70cm to 80cm.
In response to questioning from lawyer Adam Holloway, who is acting for the pathologist who carried out the autopsy on Lachie, Basu said the weight of the lungs do not rule out drowning as a cause of death because water can be expressed from the lungs during resuscitation.
She said the possible scenarios that lead to Lachie’s death were a freak medical accident causing collapse near the water; being placed in the water by someone after an inflicted injury or unknown cause of death elsewhere to cover up the real cause of death; or a freak sudden accident where he fell, banged his head and slipped under the water.
Basu said all of those scenarios were rare, and there was little to no medical evidence to support any of them, and unintentional injuries (accidents) were among the commonest causes of death in Lachie’s age group in Aotearoa.
She said a child aged three years and eight months has the ability to walk 1.2km [the distance from Lachie’s home to where he was found] but her initial assumption was that he had walked that route before and that someone had forgotten or had not disclosed that piece of information.
“Then that would make it much more understandable for him to walk down a relatively boring path … he could not see the ponds from the fence or gate and there is nothing there to pique his interest,’’ she said.
Earlier in the inquest, Lachie’s father Paul said he believed Lachie did not know about the ponds and had not been there.
On Tuesday, lawyer Robin Bates, who is acting for the police, talked about the alleged walk Lachie made and asked Basu whether preschoolers were risk takers.
“The unusual aspect is that he did it all by himself,’’ Basu said.
She disagreed with evidence given last week by Dr Judy Melinek, who said it was ‘’very, very unlikely to the point of being improbable’’ that Lachie had suffered a head injury that showed no external trauma that had caused his death.
“I was quite surprised about that opinion because it is accepted as a standard that children often do not have external signs of abusive injuries, including head injuries,’’ she said.