Delestre

PROVIDENCE — Gruesome autopsy details from a former assistant state medical examiner yesterday dominated the fifth day of Gilbert Delestre’s murder trial for the death of a toddler four years ago.

Dr. Dorata Latuszynski concluded that 3-year-old Thomas “T.J.” Wright, whom Delestre is accused of beating to death in the Woonsocket apartment he shared with the boy’s aunt, died of brain injuries and a fracture to the left thigh caused by blunt force trauma.

As the Superior Court jury listened, prosecutor Scott Erickson led Latuszynski through excruciating details of the injuries she found.

T.J.’s body arrived at her office in a clean disposable diaper and a hospital gown, she said, accompanied by a stuffed dolphin and a Mickey Mouse.

Slap marks were imprinted on his cheeks. A bone in his upper thigh was broken. His brain was swollen and had shifted in his skull. He had a compression fracture in his spine, according to Latuszynski.

Kayla Roderick, who was babysitting T.J. the night the toddler died, has testified that Delestre and his girlfriend, Katherine Bunnell, took turns beating T.J. after becoming enraged when they returned from a night out on Oct. 29, 2004, to find a mess on their new living room rug. The couple, whohad two young daughters, became foster parents to T.J. and his two brothers while their mother, Karen Wright, served time in an Illinois prison for trafficking marijuana.

Bunnell and Delestre blamed each other for the injuries that caused the boy’s death so they were tried separately. Bunnell was convicted in May of second-degree murder and conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison with the chance of parole.

In court yesterday, Wright and the boy’s grandmother, Mary Bunnell, sat with their backs against a wall, to the side of the projector screen, so they could not see the autopsy pictures that the prosecutor was displaying.

One photo showed the 32-pound boy with bruises on his head and left cheek, his long dark eyelashes brushing against swollen eyes. He had detached retinas in both eyes consistent with “significant trauma.”

Latuszynski said there was an imprint of a hand on his left cheek and a fainter one on his right cheek. Delestre did not look at photos that showed the boy’s face.

The boy’s left upper thigh was “expanded.” Its outline looked deformed from the internal break of the femur that caused one end of the bone to lift over the other, Latuszynski said. She said there was a significant amount of blood near the broken femur, which meant that the volume of blood needed to feed vital organs was reduced. She said she “considered it a very significant factor” in the boy’s demise.

Latuszynski said when his brain swelled, it had nowhere to go in the skull and pushed towards its base near the beginning of the spinal cord. “The center for the heartbeat and breathing is in that segment. If that segment is compromised the heartbeat and breathing may cease,” she said.

Did that happen with T.J., Erickson asked.

“That is the explanation,” Latuszynski said.

Judge Netti C. Vogel recessed the trial until Monday, when the prosecution is expected to rest its case and Delestre may take the stand in his own defense.

tpina@projo.com