EDMONTON — A woman who lived with two people charged in the death of a toddler found outside an Edmonton church says she often heard crying, yelling, smacking and more crying from their bedroom.
Tasha-Lee Doreen Mack and the child’s father, Joey Crier, are charged with second-degree murder in the 2017 death of 19-month old Anthony Joseph Raine.
Mack pleaded not guilty Monday at the start of her trial. A date has not yet been set for Crier’s trial.
An agreed statement of facts submitted in Mack’s case said that Crier, Mack and Anthony moved into the Edmonton home of Alexa Noseworthy and Adrian Hampshire in mid-March and stayed there for about five or six weeks.
Anthony was a chunky, happy baby when he arrived, Noseworthy said, but he was “skin and bones” by the time the family left in April.
“He lost a lot of weight,” Noseworthy testified.
She recalled Crier once hitting the boy in the mouth as the child sat in an exersaucer. Another time she saw the father raise his arm above the boy’s playpen.
“Skin on skin has an obvious sound,” she said. “He closed the door. I heard two more.”
Noseworthy told court that Mack and Crier started leaving Anthony in the bedroom and she rarely saw them feed him.
“I heard lots of fighting,” she said. “It got worse.”
Crown prosecutor Mark van Manen suggested Mack either abused the boy or did nothing to stop the violence that killed him.
“The Crown expects to show that, in the two months before Anthony was found dead … he was the victim of physical abuse,” he said.
The abuse became more severe as time went on, van Manen added, and both Mack and Crier are liable for the boy’s death.