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WARNING: This story contains details about violence involving children.
The joint trial of an Ottawa couple accused of killing a seven-week-old boy began Tuesday at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Boravy Buth, the infant’s mother, and Patrick O’Connor are both charged with second-degree murder. Buth is also charged with criminal negligence causing death. Neither of the accused are in custody and sat in the public gallery during the proceeding, which began with opening submissions from the Crown.
Buth and O’Connor have both pleaded not guilty. It will be up to a 12-person jury to decide their fate.
Crown attorney Sonia Beauchamp argued both parties are guilty, alleging the baby was attacked on Oct. 26, 2021, the day he died.
Around 4:30 a.m. that morning, police were called to a residence in Ottawa’s west end over reports of a baby not breathing.
Beauchamp said the two officers first dispatched to the scene didn’t receive any other information from the couple about what had happened until the mother was asked directly.
Buth and O’Connor were originally charged in 2023 with failing to provide the necessaries of life, following a 16-month investigation involving the police service’s homicide unit and its sexual assault and child abuse unit. Their charges were later upgraded.
Crown calls first witnesses
The Crown’s first witness, Const. Stefan Kubiseski, was one of the two officers first dispatched to the scene in the early autumn morning more than four years ago.
Kubiseski said he and his partner Const. Jordan Blonde arrived minutes after they received the call, and rushed to perform CPR on the infant.
While he was holding the child’s head, Kubiseski recalled noticing bruising on the boy’s right eyelid and from his left shoulder down to his neck. He also said the baby’s skintone changed from a pink hue to a dark purple colour as the officers performed CPR.
When paramedics arrived, Kubiseski says they took over, performing chest compressions on the infant. Soon after, the paramedics moved the boy into an ambulance to be transported to hospital.
That’s when Kubiseski went back inside the residence, where he said he spoke to Buth and tried to gather information he could relay to paramedics and medical staff.
According to Kubiseski, Buth told him the baby had fallen off a bed between 2 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. She said she walked him around the room and brought him back to bed once he was OK. Then around 4:15 a.m., she said she was awoken by O’Connor, who told her the baby wasn’t breathing.
Kubiseski described Buth as “frantic,” recalling her pacing the kitchen and crying.
He took the woman to the Queensway Carleton Hospital’s emergency room in his police cruiser, where the baby was pronounced dead around 5:15 a.m.
Kubiseski said Buth then tried performing chest compressions and breaths and rubbed the baby’s arms and legs.
“I told her it would be best to lay him down,” he said, breaking into tears on the witness stand. “But I let her have the time with her infant.”
Buth was also visibly emotional in court Tuesday, crying throughout the proceeding. Her defence lawyer Natasha Calvinho gave her a box of tissues during Kubiseski’s testimony.
Blonde was next to testify. He said when he got inside the residence, he saw O’Connor performing CPR on the baby, who was on the living room floor.
Blonde took over, directing O’Connor to continue delivering breaths while he performed chest compressions, but said “the child was cold to the touch.”
Blonde also remembered seeing injuries on the child’s body and said he heard screaming and crying while at the scene, but didn’t recall who the noises were coming from.
Both constables testified that the baby had no pulse.
The trial resumes Wednesday and is expected to last eight weeks.