Benedict Agbo, a forensic toxicologist with the Police Force Criminal Investigation Department has testified that he didn’t test the “blackish substance” found in the intestine of Sylvester Oromoni Jnr.
Recall that 11-year-old Sylvester died last year after being sent home from school when he complained of pains.
A video of Sylvester crying on his hospital bed sparked outrage and Nigerians called for justice for him while some staged protests at the school and left flowers and teddy bears.
Testifying at the coroner’s inquest into the death of the deceased, toxicologist Agbo explained that he didn’t carry out the test on the blackish substance found in Sylvester’s intestine because there was no request for that.
According to him, the Police Area Commander in Warri, Delta State, contacted him and informed him that an autopsy was going to be done on the deceased.
He said he, thereafter, established contact with the pathologist in the state, Dr Clement Vhriterhire, and received some samples for chemical analysis.
He identified the samples sent to the toxicologist as being tagged A: (containing cake dark brown labelled heart blood), B: (containing greyish liquid substance labelled stomach content), C: (sample note containing a greyish brown mass of flesh labelled liver), and sample bottle containing light reddish coloured liquid labelled fluid from the eye).
He admitted that he did a physical examination of the stomach content (sample B).
He said: “At page 5 of the Warri pathology, it is correct it was caked blood he sent to me.”
The toxicologist however did not make mention of the “blackish substance” found in the late student.
This was queried by the counsel for the Oromoni family, Femi Falana (SAN).
At a previous proceeding of the coroner sitting in Ikeja, a Consultant Pathologist with the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) Dr. Sunday Soyemi had told the inquest that he discovered the “blackish substance in the boy’s intestine during autopsy”.
While answering questions under cross-examination from Femi Falana, Dr Soyemi, however, testified that no test was carried out to determine what the blackish substance was as LASUTH had no toxicology laboratory to conduct the test.
