N.B. mother found guilty in death of 2-year-old daughter
Former boyfriend not guilty and released
A Canterbury, N.B., womanwas found guilty Thursday of criminal negligence causing the death of her two-year-old daughter.
Anna-Marie Mooers, 27,was charged along with her then boyfriend, Curtis Hathaway, after failing to recognizeJuli-Annawas in need of medical attention in April 2004.
The toddler died of a perforated bowel. An autopsy found that a plastic pencil-shaped toy, nine centimetres long and one centimetre in diameter, had been inside the child for two or three days and had caused the perforation.
After Justice Paulette Garnettrenderedthe guilty verdictat the Court of Queen's Benchin Fredericton, Mooers was taken into custody until her Nov. 29 sentencing.
Hathaway, 26, of Grand Falls, N.B., was found not guilty andreleased.
Defence lawyer Richard Cove had argued in court thatHathaway was just Mooers's boyfriend, that he didn't have much say in how her children were raised and it wasn't his place to take Juli-Anna to the hospital.
The couple had only been together for a few months before Juli-Anna's death, Cove said.
Inthe trial the court heard testimony that during a doctor's visit one month before her death, Juli-Anna was bruised and dehydrated. By the time she died she was also malnourished and had herpes sores around her mouth and vagina.