Children’s deaths not ‘natural,’ doctor testifies

Mother charged in 2009 deaths of two daughters

L AVA L • The information coming through on Georges Picard’s emergency radio kept shifting.

At first, the call was about two children who had fallen ill. Then it escalated: the two children were in a coma, and finally, he learned, they were in cardiac arrest.

But by the time Picard, then an emergency room doctor with 20 years experience, arrived at Adele Sorella’s home in Laval, Que., he knew it was too late.

Paramedics had already called off any resuscitation attempts. The girls, Amanda, 9, and Sabrina, 8, were on their backs, side-by-side in the family’s playroom. There were no obvious signs of violence, but they had already started turning grey and blue. Their jaws were too rigid to open.

Picard got down on his knees next to them and confirmed his initial thought: There was nothing left to do.

“I’m not a specialist, not a coroner, or a toxicologist or a pathologist,” Picard answered in court on Monday when asked how he thought the girls had died. “But my clinical impression? It wasn’t natural . ... I had the impression it was a double medical intoxication.”

Sorella, 52, is on trial for two counts of first-degree murder for her daughters’ deaths on March 31, 2009. She has pleaded not guilty.

Earlier Monday, jurors heard how police were still trying to establish a cause of death more than a month after the girls were found dead.

While testifying, Louis Galarneau, a retired Laval police officer who handled the evidence in the case, described how the force considered all possibilities in the early days of the investigation.

After learning Picard had suggested there was a possibility the victims had been drugged or poisoned, Galarneau was in charge of collecting all unidentified liquids or substances found throughout the home. He also sought any documentation related to medication the victims’ parents might have been taking.

An initial autopsy had suggested the girls had maybe been drugged. A second autopsy ruled out the presence of any chemicals from toxic household items, but didn’t rule out traces of drugs or medication. Galarneau was told to keep an eye out for any beige-coloured medication that would have been crushed into powder form.

Police also ordered testing on Sorella’s clothes — a blue Columbia vest, blue leggings, and white and blue Adidas running shoes, among other items — to see if there were any signs of her daughters’ bodily fluids on them. Traces of what looked like blood had left dark stains on the blue play mats beneath the girls, near their mouths.

The jury is yet to hear any results from the various tests performed. The cause of death is also yet to be established during the trial.

Following a nearly twohour meeting in early May 2009, the court heard Monday, it was decided two Laval police investigators would start coordinating a specific aspect of the investigation: the different tests being done on a hyperbaric chamber found in Sorella’s home.

The chamber has been featured prominently throughout the trial. It was found upstairs in the home. Sorella would use it to help with Sabrina’s juvenile arthritis.