A Red Deer man charged with second-degree murder of his four-month-old daughter made a brief court appearance in Red Deer provincial court on Thursday.
Julian Thomson, 21, had been undergoing testing at Alberta Hospital Edmonton, but it was not the kind of tests that were requested by the court, said defence lawyer Patty MacNaughton.
The court decided that Thomson would return for testing. He will be back before the judge on July 18.
A tentative preliminary hearing has been set for Nov. 15 in Red Deer provincial court.
The murder charges come after Zaria McCall was brought by a parent to Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre with life-threatening head injuries about 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 2, 2011.
The child was transferred by STARS to Edmonton’s Stollery Children’s Hospital. She died about 1:15 a.m. the next morning. An autopsy concluded the death was a homicide.
Police allege that the injuries occurred when the baby was in the family’s Red Deer home.
Twenty-six RCMP officers spent almost 450 hours investigating the incident.