Doctor and paramedics thought girls were poisoned, jury at Adele Sorella trial hears

When Dr. George Picard arrived at Adele Sorella's Laval home on March 31, 2009, paramedics had already stopped their efforts to resuscitate the two girls who were found unconscious in their playroom.

The bodies of Sorella's two daughters, Amanda, 9, and Sabrina, 8, had already started to harden in some places. Their skin had lost its redness, Picard told the jury of six men and six women and Superior Court Justice Sophie Bourque Monday, on the fifth day of Sorella's trial. 

Sorella, 52, has pleaded not guilty to two first-degree murder charges in the deaths of her daughters, Amanda, 9, and Sabrina, 8. Their bodies were found lying in the playroom by their uncle.

By 5 p.m., Picard, who is a physician for Urgences-Santé, declared both girls were dead. 

Picard told the court he believed at the time that they did not die of natural causes.

"My clinical impression was that it was not natural," Picard said of the two girls' seemingly simultaneous deaths.

"I was under the impression that it was a double medical intoxication."

Picard said he looked inside garbage bins in the kitchen and bathroom to see if there were any empty medicine bottles.

While he was doing that, he noticed a hyperbaric chamber in one of the rooms. He said he'd seen the chambers in hospitals.

"I don't know what that was doing in a private home," he said.

The jury has been told the chamber was used to treat Sabrina's juvenile arthritis.

Last week in his opening statements, Prosecutor Nektarios Tzortzinas told the jury they will hear more about the chamber's use.

Earlier Monday, the jury heard the testimony of Daniel Massé, one of the first paramedics to arrive at the Sorella home in Laval's Pie-IX neighbourhood.

Massé said he, too, thought the girls could have been poisoned because of the lack of signs of violence on their bodies and said he told police about his hypothesis.

During defence lawyer Guy Poupart's cross-examination of Massé, he said police had asked that the paramedics leave everything as it was.

"It's a usual demand — one that was, unfortunately, not respected," Poupart said.

Massé said that was correct. He said he and other paramedics took some of the equipment they used in the home back with them and may have displaced objects, but that no one asked them about it afterward.

Dozens of medications, homeopathic remedies

The jury at the trial heard a total of three witnesses Monday, as Sorella's defence team wrapped up its cross-examination of one of the case's lead investigators.

Retired Sgt. Det. Louis Galarneau oversaw the crime scene at the Sorella home while it was searched.

Under cross-examination from Guy Poupart's brother, Pierre Poupart, Galarneau said he asked that a number of Sorella's clothes be sent to the Laval police forensics lab for testing.

He wanted to know whether the pair of blue leggings, blue jacket, black tank top, pink socks, blue and white Adidas sneakers and vest with a fur collar had any traces of the daughters' bodily fluids that could be connected to the girls' deaths.

Galarneau testified that other items seized at the home included dozens of bottles of medication and homeopathic remedies. He said he also asked officers to collect "any liquid or substance that wasn't clearly identified."

He had made the request before the autopsies revealed no trace of intoxication.

By the end of April, a month after the girls' deaths, Galarneau was not aware of a plausible cause of death, he told Poupart.

The cause of death of the two girls has not yet been established before the court.

Sorella, who is free on bail, sat behind the two Poupart defence lawyers.

She at times took notes and and at times looked ahead, her eye and the corner of her mouth sometimes appearing to twitch.

A woman arrived towards the end of the morning's testimony and hugged Sorella as the court broke for lunch.

"I'm praying for you," she told the defendant.