Toddler Liam Fee may have been sexually assaulted and suffocated before he received the fatal blow which ruptured his heart, a murder trial has been told.
A jury heard that a single stamp to his abdomen which forced blood up a vein and burst open a hole in a chamber of his heart could equally have been administered by a seven-year-old child or an adult.
Liam’s mother Rachel, 28, and her civil partner Nyomi Fee, 32, are both accused of murdering the youngster at a house in Fife in March 2014 and attempting to defeat the ends of justice by blaming the killing on a seven year-old boy.
They deny the charges and associated allegations of child abuse involving Liam and two other children in their care.
Pathologist Dr Paul French, 38, told the High Court at Livingston that the heart injury was the most likely cause of Liam’s death.
Mark Stewart QC, defending Nyomi Fee, asked him if the force of being stamped on in a “sudden sharp manner” would generate the compressive effect that would lead to this heart injury. He replied: “That is one possibility, yes.”
Mr Stewart said: “That stamp would be likely to be applied to the abdomen?” “Yes.”
“That event if it occurred, would be capable of being executed by a single person?” “Yes, that is possible.”
“And that single person might have been a four stone child?” “Yes that is possible.”
The jury also heard that little Liam had severe bruising to his private parts consistent with being sexually groped roughly before he died.
Injuries in and around his mouth and nose could have been linked with someone putting their hand over his mouth and smothering him.
The jury also heard that bones in his upper arm and thigh which had been broken on two separate occasions just prior to death and three to six days previously could also have been the result of a stamping motion.
The trial, before Lord Burns, continues.