She was burnt with cigarettes

Beaten until her heart ruptured, four-year-old Amy Emily Annamunthodo also was burnt with cigarettes about her body, including her genitals. Forensic pathologist Dr Hughvon des Vignes, in his evidence yesterday, listed multiple extensive external and internal injuries sustained by the child, including a fractured rib, a “buss lip”, bruising and bleeding to her head and organs. Des Vignes was testifying in the trial against the child’s stepfather, Marlon King, in the San Fernando First Assizes.

He said the child was under-developed, measuring 100 cm and weighing 33 pounds. He said on the development chart, only ten per cent of children in the world would be so small. King is before Justice Anthony Carmona accused of murdering the child at his Marabella home on May 15, 2006. Witness Andre Anthony Rocke testified seeing King punching Amy 20 to 30 times as she hung from her hair.

Des Vignes, who performed an autopsy on her body at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, said the multiple injuries would have been afflicted on the child within an hour or two before death. However, he said the injuries to her heart, including the bursting of the right atrium, bleeding and bruising over the heart sack and extensive bleeding an bruising of the aorta, would have resulted in her death in a minimum of 15 minutes but it was likely that she died much sooner.