CAS worker testifies at Jeffrey Baldwin inquest
Posted September 10, 2013 5:44 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A coroner’s inquest into the starvation death of a five-year-old Toronto boy is hearing that most of his house appeared normal, but in the bedroom he shared with his sister there was an overwhelming stench of urine and feces.
A worker from the Catholic Children’s Aid Society is testifying Tuesday at the inquest into Jeffrey Baldwin’s death in 2002.
Osiris Villalobos says he went to the home after Jeffrey’s death and if he hadn’t seen Jeffrey’s bedroom he wouldn’t have had any concerns about the care of the other children who were living in the house.
Jeffrey’s grandparents were granted custody of the boy and his three siblings despite having previous child abuse convictions and were later convicted of second-degree murder.
Villalobos says there was a latch on the outside of Jeffrey’s bedroom door to lock it and inside it was extremely cold, with few blankets on his crib-like bed and filthy diapers everywhere.
He says he examined the room with the coroner, who pressed Jeffrey’s feces-stained mattress, while wearing a glove, and found that it was also soaked with urine.
Jeffrey weighed 21 pounds — about the same as he did on his first birthday — when he died of bacterial bronchopneumonia as a complication of chronic starvation.
