Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

By Tatiana Pina
Journal staff writer

PROVIDENCE -- An expert in child-abuse pediatrics who attended 3-year-old Thomas "T.J." Wright at Hasbro Children's Hospital after he had been severely beaten said today that the boy's injuries were not consistent with a fall down stairs.

"This child suffered multiple injuries. Many children fall down the stairs. They don't suffer this amount of injuries," Dr. Reena Isaac, now employed with Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, testified in the murder trial of Gilbert Delestre in Providence County Superior Court.

Delestre is charged with murder and conspiracy.

Prosecutors say that Delestre and his then-girlfriend, Katherine Bunnell, severely beat the child, who was known as T.J., after arriving at their Woonsocket apartment from a night out to find spilled yogurt and milk on living-room carpet.

Bunnell was convicted in May of second-degree murder and a conspiracy to commit murder charge. In October, she was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility fo parole.

The boy was declared brain dead. He died on Oct. 31, 2004.

When T.J. arrived at the hospital in Providence, he was comatose. He had significant facial and head bruises, a broken femur -- thigh bone -- and bleeding on the brain, according to Dr. Isaac. The prognosis was grave, she told the jury today.

Robert Mann, defense lawyer for Delestre, has said Delestre hit T.J. and that T.J. fell down stairs, but that Delestre did not intend to kill the child.

Mann has asked for a manslaughter charge instead of murder and conspiracy.

Yesterday, the babysitter who was at the apartment the night the couple came home, testified.

 Tags  Bunnell Delestre Providence Thomas J. Wright trial Woonsocket

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