CANADA • Miguel FERNANDES, 18 months old ~ Toronto ON

Mom delayed calling 911 for scalded son, who died, Crown alleges
January 17, 2011


Miguel Fernandes, 18 months, who was found scalded to death in his mother's Jane St.
apartment in 2007. His mother, Melissa Alexander, is on trial for manslaughter.

A North York woman delayed several hours before seeking medical help for “catastrophic” burns to her 18-month-old son, and thereby caused his death, a prosecutor says.

Melissa Alexander was alone in her Jane St. apartment with her two young boys while Miguel lay with serious burns to 40 per cent of his body, Crown prosecutor Barry Stagg said Monday in the opening of her trial.

Alexander, 25, faces one charge of manslaughter for failing to provide the necessities of life to her son Miguel Fernandes.

The boy’s father, Sergio Fernandes, a bricklayer, left for work before 7 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2007, Stagg told Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy as he outlined the Crown’s case.

He left her to care for their two children: Miguel and his 29-month-old brother.

Fernandes arrived home about 7 p.m. that evening, but Alexander did not tell him their son was seriously injured, court heard. “She told him that she treated the child personally,” and that he was recovering, Stagg told the court.

It was not until after 2 a.m. the next day that Alexander called emergency services after she discovered their boy had no vital signs, Stagg said.

She told the 911 dispatcher that Miguel had spilled hot water on himself at home.

She told her sister in a phone call that she had looked after Miguel’s burns herself.

The court will be shown surveillance video and receipts indicating she was out shopping by herself without the children that day, although they were in her sole care, Stagg said. She had an “abundance of time” to seek help after for Miguel’s injuries, but did not, he added.

“The burns were catastrophic,” and covered 40 per cent of his body, Stagg said.

“A reasonable person would have immediately sought medical attention for the child” and would not have waited until after 2 a.m. the next day, Stagg said.

“The absence of medical treatment deprived the child of a reasonable expectation of survival,” Stagg said. Had she taken him to hospital he would have had a chance of being saved, he added.

Paramedic Tony Iagallo, who was at the apartment while colleagues fought to revive the boy, said he spoke to a woman he assumed was the mother.

“She said that the baby had been burned by hot water the other night. She said she put Vaseline and cotton material on the burn site. I also asked her if she took the baby to hospital and she said she did not,” Iagallo said.

The trial continues.

http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/article/923262--mom-delayed-calling-911-for-scalded-son-who-died-crown-alleges

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WARNING: graphic description

Courtroom stunned by burned baby photos
January 28, 2011


Miguel Fernandes died of "catastrophic" burns, his mother's manslaughter trial was told.

The tiny burned body of Miguel Fernandes lies naked on the autopsy table, only a ghastly, searing redness where his layer of skin used to be.

The horror of it takes your breath away.

On his back, he’s been stripped of skin from just below his shoulders all the way to include the soles of his feet. Turned over, he is scalded raw from his pelvis, down to his feet, his skin blistered away everywhere except on his genitalia, top of his knees and toes.

In his cold, scientific way, the forensic pathologist is explaining that the 18-month-old died of “immersion scalding” — that someone had placed Miguel backside down into very hot “liquid” that left him with third-degree burns to 40% of his small body.

“Without appropriate, urgent medical treatment,” testified Dr. David Chiasson Thursday, “it led to a cardiopulmonary arrest.”

But his clinical words fade into the background because all you can see are the photos of that poor lifeless child with the curly brown hair. And all you can imagine are the hours of unbearable agony he went through before he died.

No wonder it is a judge alone who will decide the fate of Miguel’s mother.

Free on bail, Melissa Alexander arrives alone each day with her backpack at the University Ave. courthouse where she’s on trial before Ontario superior court Justice Anne Molloy for manslaughter, accused of not getting medical help in time to save her son’s life.

No one has been charged with the actual scalding of the little boy.

As the gruesome photos of her dead child are shown, the 25-year-old mother with the crimped hair has the good grace to dab at her eyes.

But the only soft sobs that echo through the almost empty courtroom come from Miguel’s paternal grandmother. “He suffered so much,” Maria Fernandes whispered as she leaned heavily on a friend.

According to Crown attorney Barry Stagg, Miguel’s father, Sergio Fernandes, went to his bricklaying job early on Sept. 11, 2007 and left Alexander home alone with her two small boys.

On his return at 7 p.m. to her Jane St. apartment, she told him Miguel had been hurt but it was nothing serious and she’d treated his wounds herself.

Photos from the post mortem show cotton gauze had been wrapped on some of his burns and white cream on his buttocks.

Neighbours at the time told reporters they heard a baby crying for hours on end. But it wasn’t until 2 a.m. that Alexander finally called 911 to report her child wasn’t breathing. She told the dispatcher Miguel had spilled hot water on himself.

Court heard the boy’s burns were “catastrophic” and prosecutors contend “a reasonable person would have immediately sought medical attention for the child.”

If she had, they argue that there was a very good chance Miguel would have survived.

Instead, the Sick Kids senior pediatric pathologist said the swelling in his legs show hours passed before he finally succumbed to his injuries. During that time, Chiasson explained, Miguel’s 10-kg body would have gone into shock, his blood pressure couldn’t be maintained and his heart would have begun beating faster in a futile effort to compensate.

And finally, it would have stopped.

Imagine the pain when you scald your finger. Now imagine the torture Miguel suffered with almost half his skin burned away.

The pathologist determined that being immersed in burning liquid ultimately killed Miguel, but those weren’t his only injuries. During the autopsy he also discovered internal bleeding deep into the tissue and muscle of the toddler’s behind. “Most likely from blunt force impact being applied to that part of the body,” Chiasson testified.

When Alexander’s defence lawyer tried to suggest Miguel may have injured himself in a fall or on a slide, Chiasson said it was unlikely.

Left unsaid was the obvious: It appears someone had been hitting that sweet little boy very, very hard.

The day’s gruelling testimony finally done, the clear-eyed Alexander packed up her backpack and easily headed on her way.

While those of us still haunted by her dead son’s autopsy photos staggered out of the courtroom, knowing those horrific images were destined to follow us home.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/michele_mandel/2011/01/27/17062021.html

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Father of fatally scalded baby still asks why, court hears
February 3, 2011

The father of a baby scalded to death at home says he still asks himself why he didn’t check the boy’s burns more thoroughly on the night he died.

“That’s a question I ask myself every day,” Sergio Fernandes, 26, testified in a video hookup from Portugal, where he now lives.

Melissa Alexander, 25, his former live-in girlfriend, faces one charge of manslaughter for failing to provide the necessities of life to their 18-month-old son, Miguel Fernandes.

The Crown alleges that she delayed for hours seeking medical help on Sept. 11, 2007, even though Miguel had catastrophic burns to 40 per cent of his body.

Testifying from a studio in Lisbon, Fernandes told Ontario Superior Court that on Sept. 11 he left the Jane St. apartment he shared with Alexander to go to his bricklaying job in Mississauga.

They had two children: Miguel, of whom he was the biological father, and Alexander’s other son from another man, Shawn, age 29 months.

On the way back from work that evening, Fernandes said, he called Alexander and she told him there was a “little incident that happened to Miguel” involving boiling water.

“She said that she had a pot of boiling water on the top of the table so she could crimp her hair, or something to do with cosmetics, and that he had pulled the pot down and he had burned himself on the legs,” he said.

She told Fernandes it was not serious, he testified.

She said she had gone to a walk-in clinic and a doctor had prescribed Polysporin cream and told her everything should be fine.

“She said it was minor and that Polysporin would work. The way she talked to me it never occurred to me it would be as serious as it was,” Fernandes told prosecutor Barry Stagg.

When he got home at 7 p.m., Fernandes said he checked Miguel in his bed and tried to give him some juice from his bottle, but he “didn’t grab onto it.”

“He was very still. He was quiet. He didn’t make a sound. He never even moved,” he said.

Fernandes said he started to unzip his jumpsuit to inspect the burns but Alexander stopped him. “I stopped half way because she said to not pester him right now because if he started moving he would start crying again.”

Fernandes said he still asks himself why he didn’t unzip the jumper all the way to properly inspect the burns.

He checked on Miguel several more times that evening, and the baby was always quiet, he said.

The last time, he had his eyes closed. “I just gave him a kiss good night.”

Fernandes said he went to sleep around 10:30 and was awoken early the next morning by ambulance, firefighters and police in his living room, trying to save Miguel. “I got up kind of stunned.”

Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Catherine Currie, he denied that the first thing Alexander had told him about the accident was that Miguel was badly hurt on his legs and bottom.

“I am going to suggest that when you got home from work you were told that Miguel was pretty seriously hurt’” Currie said.

“No,” Fernandes replied. “If I was aware of it I would have grabbed my son and went to the hospital … like any normal person would do.”

Currie pointed out that when first questioned by police he said that Alexander had told him she had gone to a pharmacy, not a doctor’s.

He replied that he was under the impression that she went to a pharmacy at a doctor’s clinic.

The trial continues.

http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/article/932944--father-of-fatally-scalded-baby-still-asks-why?bn=1

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Manslaughter trial becomes debate over the definition of ‘minimum’ care
Feb. 04, 2011 7:22PM EST


Melissa Alexander’s feeble efforts to treat her baby son’s catastrophic burns were enough to satisfy community standards, her lawyer has suggested.

Now 25, Ms. Alexander is charged with manslaughter for failing to provide her son with what are called in law “the necessaries of life,” a Criminal Code definition that includes medical attention.

Eighteen-month-old Miguel Fernandes suffered grievous burns to 40 per cent of his body on Sept. 11, 2007, succumbed to shock and was pronounced dead at hospital early the next morning.

Ms. Alexander, Ontario Superior Court Judge Anne Molloy has heard, dressed the boy’s raw red wounds with cream and wrapped them in cotton batting, but then went out shopping, leaving Miguel and his big brother Shawn, then almost three, alone for a time in their Jane Street apartment.

Only at least 10 hours after the incident did Ms. Alexander deign to call 911, then to report Miguel was dead and – a lie –that he had pulled a bowl of boiling water onto himself and was therefore the author of his own misfortune.

In fact, experts have testified the little boy suffered “immersion-type scald” injuries, meaning he’d been placed in hot water, likely the bathtub.

Friday, Ms. Alexander’s lawyer Catherine Currie told Judge Molloy that she should acquit her client for two reasons.

First, in what could be termed the “why bother?” prong of the defence, Ms. Currie argued that because Miguel may have died even if he had received prompt care, Ms. Alexander’s delay in seeking help – if reporting a death in any way qualifies as help – wasn’t significant.

In the second prong, Ms. Currie told the judge, Ms. Alexander’s conduct after the little boy was injured “was not a marked departure of [what] a reasonably prudent parent [would do] in the circumstances.”

What’s more, Ms. Currie then appeared to caution Judge Molloy, who is hearing the case without a jury, against judging Ms. Alexander too harshly.

“To take my client and ignore the real circumstances that she was in is to deny the situation of many parents who are looking after their children, to look at her and say ‘You did the wrong thing, you should have phoned 911, that’s it, end of story.’ ”

Ms. Currie then suggested that measured by a reasonable “community standard,” what Ms. Alexander did after Miguel’s terrible injury was if not Jim-dandy, then sufficient to get her off the manslaughter rap.

“What I’m suggesting to you is that the minimum standard of care in this case, because the child died, obviously was woefully inadequate, but it was care,” she told Judge Molloy. The ointment, the cursory first-aid Ms. Alexander gave the little boy, Ms. Currie said, ought to count for something. “My client did not provide no care for her child.”

“And you are saying that meets the standard of care of what an average person would do?” Judge Molloy asked.

“I’m saying that it met a minimum standard of care and was therefore not a marked departure,” the lawyer replied.

A few minutes later, apparently swept away by her own rhetoric, Ms. Currie told the judge flatly that “there was nothing hidden” by Ms. Alexander.

“Let’s just get the elephant out, shall we?” the judge said.

“She said that this child pulled water down on top of himself. That’s impossible. That isn’t what happened. And she told that story to her sister, her husband and all of the emergency personnel that were there, as well as the 911 operator. She told that story all day long … and that isn’t what happened.

“That’s not physically possible and that’s as plain as the nose on your face when you look of the pictures of that little boy. So, to stand there and say to me she hid nothing is really stretching.”

Ms. Currie then stubbornly insisted Ms. Alexander “didn’t hide the nature of his injuries.”

“No, but she did. … She did. She said that he pulled water down on himself and burned his legs. That isn’t what happened and she knew that isn’t what happened, so she did a fair bit,” the judge said.

She continued: “And now that we have acknowledged the elephant in the room, what do I take from that about the standard of care and why she did or did not take this child to a doctor or to a hospital or tell anybody actually what had happened?”

Ms. Currie, undeterred, then went on to baldly misstate evidence heard this week from Sergio Fernandes, Miguel’s father and Ms. Alexander’s common-law husband. Testifying via video link from Portugal, where he now lives, Mr. Fernandes said that when he arrived home from work that day and tried to unzip Miguel’s sleeper to have a look at the minor burn that had been reported to him, Ms. Alexander warned him off by saying Miguel would only start crying again.

“She told Sergio about the injuries as soon as she could and she tried to get him to look at the injuries…” Ms. Currie began.

Judge Molloy snapped, “There’s no evidence of that,” and abruptly announced a short break.

She will release her decision Feb. 14.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/christie-blatchford/a-manslaughter-trial-a-debate-over-a-definition/article1895510/


More on this story:
While a child lay dying, a mother went shopping

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Mom convicted of manslaughter in toddler’s scalding death
February 14, 2011


Melissa Alexander was convicted of manslaughter on Feb. 14, 2011 in the 2007 scalding death of her 18-month-old son, Miguel Fernandes.

A judge has handed a manslaughter conviction to a North York mother who went shopping for CDs while her son lay dying of catastrophic burns.

Melissa Alexander, 25, failed to provide her 19-month-old son, Miguel Fernandes, with the necessaries of life when she waited at least 10 hours before seeking medical help after he was scalded in a bath, Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy said in her written ruling, released Monday.

“If she had acted promptly in getting treatment for Miguel, it is most likely that he would have made a full recovery,” Molloy said.

Miguel died of catastrophic burns to 40 per cent of his body, likely caused by his being submersed, back side down, for at least 10 seconds in a bathtub of very hot water in Alexander’s Jane St. apartment on Sept. 11, 2007.

The mother of two tried to treat the boy herself but left him with his 29-month-old brother while she went shopping for two hours, picking up two Kanye West CDs from HMV and other items at No Frills and Canadian Tire, court heard. It’s not clear if someone was with the boys at the time.

“Going shopping for two hours instead of taking him to a hospital is nothing short of shocking,” the judge said.

It was not until 2:20 a.m. the next day that she called 911, telling the operator that Miguel was dead.

“I am fully confident that if Melissa Alexander sustained third-degree burns to 40 per cent of her own body, she would not have contented herself with some Vaseline and absorbent cotton,” Molloy said.

“She would have gotten herself to hospital, and quickly.”

Alexander also persuaded Miguel’s father — her now-estranged live-in boyfriend, Sergio Fernandes, who was at his bricklaying job when the scalding occurred — from looking at the burns when he returned home, the judge said. “She removed her son’s last hope of survival.”

Anyone looking at the boy’s body would have known he required medical attention, the judge said.

“Any person, upon being told that his mother did not see fit to get help for this little boy, would be horrified.”

Alexander also lied to emergency personnel and her family about how Miguel sustained his burns, claiming he had pulled a pot of hot water over himself, the judge said

Outside court, Miguel’s paternal grandmother, Maria Fernandes, 44, released balloons into the air in the toddler’s memory. One balloon, shaped like a teddy bear and carrying Miguel’s name, got caught a tree branch.

“She should get 10 to 15 years. But no years are going to bring Miguel back,” Fernandes said.

“She is not a human. She doesn’t have a heart. How can you do that to your own son?” she asked.

Alexander remains on bail until she returns for a sentencing hearing on April 19.

http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/article/938488--mom-gets-manslaughter-in-toddler-s-scalding-death?bn=1

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View CTV Video report: Mom found guilty of manslaughter in scalding death

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Did Catholic Children’s Aid Society fail baby Miguel Fernandes?
February 15, 2011 | CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD

Has the name of baby Miguel Fernandes joined the too-long list of youngsters failed by the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto?

First of these was Sara Podniewicz, who died on April 25, 1994, while under the supervision of the CCAS; the baby’s parents were later convicted of second-degree murder. Next was Jordan Heikamp, who starved to death on June 23, 1997, at a native shelter for homeless teens while ostensibly under the agency’s watchful eye; a coroner’s inquest called the death a homicide. Then came Jeffrey Baldwin, who on Nov. 30, 2002, died of septic shock and pneumonia after being placed by the CCAS in the care of his grandparents, both previously convicted of child abuse. The grandparents were convicted of second-degree murder.

Miguel was born on Feb. 11, 2006, to young parents who either didn’t want him or couldn’t care for him (likely a bit of each), was immediately apprehended by the CCAS, and, when he was “returned” to them more than six months later, it was to a small, squalid, cockroach-infested apartment in the Jane Street corridor in the city’s northwest end.

His mother was Melissa Alexander, a young black woman, then 21, who reportedly didn’t want to keep him. His dad was Sergio Fernandes, a 22-year-old man of Portuguese descent who hadn’t even told his parents his girlfriend was pregnant.

Only when Ms. Alexander gave birth at St. Michael’s Hospital did Mr. Fernandes tell his mother, Maria, that he had a son – and also, according to Ms. Fernandes, that Ms. Alexander had “told the nurse she didn’t want him. Sergio asked me to go to the hospital. I was in shock, I couldn’t believe it.” By the time Ms. Fernandes made it downtown just 20 minutes later, the CCAS already had taken the baby into care.

Agency social workers “continued to work with the family all the way through to Miguel’s death,” executive director Mary McConville told The Globe and Mail.

While Ms. McConville is limited in what she can discuss about Miguel’s particular case, she confirmed that this work generally involves determining if the child is safe or in continuing need of protection through regular supervision, home visits and the like.

The agency has done an internal review of the case and sent it to the office of Ontario’s chief coroner. A decision on whether to call an inquest is on hold pending final court proceedings.

But Ms. McConville readily agrees that a dead child doesn’t equal success. “Obviously,” she said in a recent interview, “it was a serious case.”

Whether the CCAS did its job isn’t yet clear, at least publicly, but with the wisdom of hindsight, the Alexander/Fernandes clan appears to have been clearly troubled and inept.

The couple had first met at Central Technical School downtown, where Ms. Alexander was a city-ranked athlete, sufficiently talented that at one time she is said to have been offered a tryout with a U.S. college.

But when she was just 19, Ms. Alexander gave birth to her first child, Shawn, who was almost three at the time of his baby brother’s death.

According to Ms. Fernandes, Ms. Alexander originally claimed that Shawn was also Sergio’s. “There’s no way that baby was my grandson,” Ms. Fernandes told The Globe. She later paid $700 for a DNA test, and sure enough, it proved her son hadn’t fathered Shawn.

But she wanted to help Sergio raise Miguel, if not raise him herself with her husband. She spoke to a lawyer, and was willing to go to court, but in the end, Sergio refused to sign the necessary papers.

READ MORE

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Why the charge was manslaughter in scalding death of baby Miguel
February 17, 2011



How did the scalding of little Miguel Fernandes end up in Ontario Superior Court as a charge of manslaughter and not second-degree murder?

The differences in the two offences are significant, as Melissa Alexander, Miguel’s mother, may appreciate more than most on April 19 when she is sentenced for the lesser crime.

Murder is where the person who causes a death meant to do it or meant to cause bodily harm she knew was likely to cause death and was reckless about whether it happened or not; this is mens rea, Latin for the requisite guilty mind.

Manslaughter is simply culpable homicide that isn’t murder.

The maximum sentence for manslaughter is life in prison, where for murder, life is the minimum. Unless a gun was used, there’s no minimum for manslaughter.

Ms. Alexander was first charged with aggravated assault in the little boy’s Sept. 12, 2007, death.

But once the autopsy was completed – it showed the 19-month-old had suffered third-degree “immersion” burns, a finding completely at odds with his mother’s claim he had pulled down a pot of boiling water onto himself – Toronto Police upped the charge against her to second-degree murder.

By the spring of 2009, the matter came before Ontario Court Judge Leslie Pringle for a preliminary hearing, the purpose of which is to determine if there is sufficient evidence upon which a reasonable jury, properly instructed, could make a finding of guilt.

It isn’t a tough hurdle, but where the case depends on circumstantial evidence, as the one against Ms. Alexander did, the preliminary judge must engage in a limited “weighing of the evidence.”

Key to the Crown’s case was Ms. Alexander’s feeble explanation for Miguel’s catastrophic burns: She told the “pot of boiling water” story to no fewer than five people – three paramedics who arrived after she called 911 the next morning to report her son was dead, and, earlier in the day, her sister Rachel Campbell, and Miguel’s father, Sergio Fernandes.

In fact, in Ms. Alexander’s version, Miguel would have been expected to suffer splash-type burns. What the autopsy showed instead was that he was plonked into a scalding tub, with only the skin on his bent knees and tip-tops of his toes spared on his lower body.

Crown prosecutors argued that Ms. Alexander’s story was a fabricated statement that jurors could use as evidence of her guilt if they could reasonably infer from it her intent.

But Judge Pringle found that because Ms. Alexander made minimal efforts to treat the burns (Vaseline and bandages) and had accepted “some responsibility” for Miguel’s injuries by acknowledging she should have taken him to hospital, her statement about the pot spilling, while “obviously inconsistent with the burns,” didn’t have the “hallmarks of a manipulative lie.”

Interestingly, when Judge Molloy convicted Ms. Alexander earlier this week of manslaughter, she said of that very same evidence, “It is like saying that putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound is adequate medical treatment because, after all, you did something rather than nothing.”

READ MORE

Mom admits she inflicted scalding wounds that led to son's death
September 28, 2011


Miguel Fernandes died of burns inflicted by his mother
when she bathed him in scalding water. Melissa Alexander
will be sentenced for manslaughter in November.

A North York woman who shopped for a CD while her baby was dying of agonizing burns to almost half of his tiny body finally admitted she accidently inflicted the searing injuries to her child, court heard Wednesday.

Melissa Alexander, 26, who was found guilty of manslaughter in February for the death of 19-month-old Miguel Fernandes on Sept. 11, 2007, made the admission in an interview with psychiatrist Dr. Scott Woodside this year for her sentencing hearing.

Alexander told the doctor she filled a tub with water but never checked the temperature.

“She felt rushed at the time because of her need to do the shopping before Miguel’s father got home,” Woodside wrote in his report filed in court. “Within five seconds, her son “literally yelled.”

She reported taking him out of the basin immediately and noted her son was crying. She reported thinking to herself, ‘Why is he crying...the water’s not that hot,’” Woodside wrote. “However when she felt the water that was still running into the basin and described it as ‘scorching hot.’”

Alexander never realized the severity of the injuries that her son had received, she told the psychiatrist. As a result, she didn’t seek out any additional assistance for him that day.

“Her explanation...does not explain her actions fully at the time (of the crime). It does not explain her lying to family members, paramedics and police...nor would it explain her attempt to lie to this writer regarding asking her neighbour to look after her children when she left the apartment between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. (to go shopping),” Woodside wrote.

He found she suffered from no major mental illness or depression and, intellectually, is of the low average range.

Alexander rose in court to say, “I’m just sorry for the whole incident, just everything.”

Crown attorney Barry Stagg is urging Justice Anne Molloy to impose a 15-year prison sentence while defence lawyer Catherine Currie wants up to two years in custody followed by probation “to help” her troubled client “through this horrible tragedy.”

Molloy will pass sentence on Nov. 8.

The judge found that Alexander left the 19-month-old child home alone, then lied to his father, Sergio Fernandes, about the extent and severity of his burns.

Miguel was possibly screaming in agony for hours when his mother abandoned him and his 29-month-old stepbrother, said Molloy in her judgment.

Miguel went into shock and fell into unconsciousness, before suffering a slow, excruciating death, court heard.

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/09/28/mom-admits-she-inflicted-scalding-wounds-that-led-to-sons-death