His injuries were not survivable, and he was taken off life support just after 3am the following day.<\/p>\n
Police launched a homicide investigation, stating Soul\u2019s injuries were non-accidental.<\/p>\n
The only people at the house when Soul was hurt were his mother Storme Turany and her then-partner Tony Farmer.<\/p>\n
They split up soon after the little boy died.<\/p>\n
Nobody has ever been charged over the infant\u2019s death, though police named Turany and Farmer as persons of interest in the months after.<\/p>\n
An inquest is now being held to establish the circumstances.<\/p>\n
Over the next two weeks, Coroner Ian Telford will hear extensive evidence from Turany and Farmer, and a number of doctors and police involved with Soul\u2019s death and the criminal investigation.<\/p>\n
Today, Scottish neuropathology expert Dr Colin Smith was called to give his opinion on Soul\u2019s injuries. <\/p>\n
The court heard that Smith had reviewed all of the medical information relating to Soul\u2019s death, including scans and the post-mortem examination report. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe post-mortem examination described a blunt force impact head injury with a skull fracture and … traumatic injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m an expert in neuropathology, and that is the examination of the brain, and sometimes the spinal cord post-mortem, to try and understand how changes to the brain may have contributed to the cause of death.<\/p>\n
\u201cCurrently, and for quite some time now, New Zealand has not had a specialist neuropathologist so I was asked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Storme Turany and her former partner Tony Farmer.<\/p>\n
Smith said after an exhaustive review of the information, the cause of Soul\u2019s death was clear to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis infant has clearly suffered a blunt force impact head injury… This clearly represents an unequivocal head injury, and the differential diagnosis lies between accidental or abusive head trauma… and I think that second scenario is just not a feasible scenario. <\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the age of this infant, abusive head trauma has to be considered the working diagnosis, and I\u2019m not aware of a suggestion of an accidental head injury which can account for this pathology.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo this pattern of pathology seems to be only linked to abusive head trauma, or inflicted head injury.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith was asked if shaking could have caused Soul\u2019s injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this case, there has clearly been impact; you don\u2019t get a skull fracture with shaking. It may be a combination of both,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He estimated Soul could have been injured up to 24 hours before his \u201ccollapse\u201d. <\/p>\n
In that time, despite his catastrophic injury, he may have appeared normal, continuing to breathe and make crying and grunting noises. <\/p>\n
But he would have been \u201cclearly unwell, very quickly\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cA baby crying does not mean they are lucid,\u201d Smith explained. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time of the episode of trauma, this infant would have been in respiratory arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soul with his mother Storme. Photo \/ Supplied <\/p>\n
Smith was asked his opinion of what Soul\u2019s head may have struck, or been struck with, to cause the fatal injury – and the level of force that would have been needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cLevel of force is always challenging,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo fracture the skull is not easy, but it is described in relatively low-level falls, so mum or dad carrying a baby and accidentally dropping the baby, they can get a linear skull fracture, and they\u2019re otherwise fine. <\/p>\n
\u201cFrom falls of one to 1.5m in height, you can get skull fractures – that\u2019s not a huge level of force, but it\u2019s a significant level of force. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think the best way to think about this is, babies can be handled quite roughly by siblings, by carers, relatives etc – they are relatively robust, which is why we don\u2019t have paediatric neurosurgical wards full of babies with these type of injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo get all the (brain injuries Soul suffered) is a level of force… that is above and beyond what a competent adult would think is acceptable handling of a baby of this age.\u201d<\/p>\n
He could not say exactly what object or surface had caused Soul\u2019s fatal injury. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to know… to get a skull fracture (like Soul\u2019s). I think your head is hit against something relatively solid, a work surface or something like that… I would suggest it\u2019s a relatively flat solid surface, but I can\u2019t be definitive about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was put to Smith that whoever hurt Soul would have been well aware of their actions. <\/p>\n
Smith said incidents resulting in fatal injuries like Soul\u2019s \u201conly happen when no one else is looking\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe person involved is the only person who knows what happened,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s very difficult to precisely hypothesise what\u2019s going on because no one is obviously going to do this in front of other adults.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coroner Ian Telford. Photo \/ Pool \/ Chris Skelton\/ Stuff<\/p>\n
On Monday, Coroner Telford explained that his role was to establish \u201cas far as possible\u201d the cause and circumstances of Soul\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t sit here as a judge in the classic sense … it\u2019s not my role to find who was liable or to discipline,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s to work out what\u2019s happened. Another important function of my role is to make recommendations to help prevent future deaths occurring in similar circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coroner Telford began the inquest by paying tribute to Soul.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to acknowledge and honour the one who is at the centre of everything we\u2019re doing here, and that is, of course, Soul,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis life was short, but he was precious. He was a gift to the world for every second of the three months, 22 days that he lived.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coroner Telford said he had a \u201creasonable idea\u201d about the cause of Soul\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
However, what has never been established is how Soul was injured.<\/p>\n
He said the inquest was a chance to inquire \u201ccarefully into that\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot shy away from a simple truth: I am Soul\u2019s coroner. My core responsibility is to him, shining a light into the shadows that surrounded his death.\u201d<\/p>\n
The inquest continues. <\/p>\n
Anna Leask is a senior journalist who covers national crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2008 and has worked as a journalist for 20 years with a particular focus on family and gender-based violence, child abuse, sexual violence, homicides, mental health and youth crime. She writes, hosts and produces the award-winning podcast A Moment In Crime, released monthly on nzherald.co.nz<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His injuries were not survivable, and he was taken off life support just after 3am the following day.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[80515,138431,1081,6794,29385,1596,4487,12629,634,6179,1601,212687,71,106,15258,13999,1019,111,54769,43,139,5006,69,21533,4918,6642,6859,1908,211240],"class_list":["post-413726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-80515","tag-abusive","tag-accident","tag-baby","tag-believes","tag-brain","tag-christchurch","tag-coroner","tag-death","tag-died","tag-expert","tag-feasible","tag-from","tag-head","tag-injury","tag-inquest","tag-international","tag-new-zealand","tag-newborn","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-not","tag-nz","tag-simply","tag-soul","tag-tells","tag-told","tag-trauma","tag-turany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}