Medical examiner testifies in court

GUYSBOROUGH — Lionel Desmond was sober when he launched a raid on his own Upper Big Tracadie home, shooting his wife, Shanna, mother Brenda and 10-yearold daughter Aaliyah. A toxicology analysis done on his blood found only caffeine and the metabolized remnants of antidepressants. At the fourth day of the Desmond Fatality Inquiry the province’s deputy chief medical examiner, Dr. Erik Mont, testified he suspected the antidepressant found in Desmond’s system to be Trazodone — a serotonin reuptake inhibitor used to treat major depressive disorder. Desmond had been waging a long battle with post traumatic stress disorder since his return home from the front lines of the Afghan war. Mont’s team arrived in Upper Big Tracadie the day after the murder-suicide and began their work after the RCMP forensics team allowed them to take responsibility for the four bodies. They began with visual assessments of the deceased before taking them away for autopsy. Mont testified they were not able to determine in which order Desmond shot the women in his life. However, evidence was presented earlier in the inquiry that Brenda called her brother at about 6 p.m. on Jan. 3 telling him to come to the house because “the boy just shot his wife.” Mont’s testimony was graphic. Shanna was having a glass of wine when she was shot three times. She died within seconds. Brenda and Aaliyah were both shot once and would have died “within minutes.” Lionel Desmond died instantly after putting the SKS .762, a semi-automatic assault rifle legally purchased two hours earlier, to his forehead and pulling the trigger. The damage to his brain meant the medical examiner was not able to check his brain matter for evidence he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated head injuries that gets worse over time and ultimately can cause dementia, problems thinking and depression. Testimony continues next week with the psychiatrists and staff at St. Martha’s Regional Hospital in Antigonish who treated Desmond. In total five weeks of testimony is scheduled for the inquiry which is not designed to find fault but instead to produce recommendations that could hopefully help avert such tragedies in the future.