Grandfather claims body frozen to the touch
Lachie Jones’ paternal grandfather, Graham Jones, says the toddler’s body was “frozen cold to the touch” as he cuddled him in the back of a police car about an hour after he was found dead.
“That boy was frozen when I felt him. His skin wouldn’t bend.”
Jones was giving evidence on Wednesday at the coronial inquest into Lachie’s death, which is in its second week in Invercargill.
Lachie was 3 years old when he was found dead late on the evening of January 29, 2019, face up in a council oxidation pond near his home in Gore, Southland.
Simon Mount, KC, a lawyer assisting Coroner Alexander Ho, asked Jones to explain how cold Lachie’s body was that night.
“There’s only one other person who I’ve seen like that, and that was when my wife passed away. Lachie was exactly the same.
“I felt my wife’s body after a couple of days at the funeral home and Lachie was identical, very much the same.”
Jones told Max Simpkins, the lawyer acting for Lachie’s father, that he was “put right off” the toddler’s mother, Michelle Officer, after she said Lachie would not be provided for in her will if anything happened to her.
He had thought Officer was “OK” until one day she sat in his lounge in Invercargill and said the young boy wouldn’t be in her will but that her two other children would. “That put me right off her,” he said. Jones said that on two occasions at his house, the toddler said he didn’t really want to go home because his older half-brothers, Cameron and Jonathan Scott, were mean to him.
He had visited the pond where Lachie was found the day after his death, and he believed Lachie was carried there.
“I don’t think Lachie was capable of walking that distance in those conditions based on how I knew Lachie.
“If he did, the [police] dogs would have picked up a scent.”
Jones told Simpkins he also went to the Gore police station that same day and found it was closed. The following day he drove back to Gore and asked to speak to Senior Sergeant Cynthia Fairley about his concerns about Lachie’s death.
“There was no response. I haven’t heard from her since,” he said.
In response to questions from Officer’s lawyer, Beatrix Woodhouse, Jones said he had some issues with Officer’s parenting style.
“Was she a good mother?” Woodhouse asked.
“No, I don’t think she was,” he replied. “I know who Lachie would have preferred to live with.”
However, Jones also said he was not claiming that Lachie was not well cared for.