WINNIPEG — A 15-year-old girl had drugs and alcohol in her system when she was killed and thrown into the Red River in Winnipeg, a toxicologist testified at a murder trial Tuesday.
Christopher Keddy, who works at the RCMP national forensics lab, told court tests showed Tina Fontaine had a level of alcohol slightly above the legal limit for driving.
Keddy also said there was a relatively high level of THC — the active ingredient in marijuana — at four nanograms per millilitre.
“Yes, it was arguably quite high,” Keddy told the trial of Raymond Cormier, 55, who has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.
He added that the amounts might have registered artificially high because of decomposition and because the tests were done on chest-cavity fluid instead of blood. Drug and alcohol tests are best done on blood samples from living persons, he said.
Tina was killed in August 2014 after she ran away from a hotel where she was being housed by Child and Family Services. She became a sexually exploited youth in the inner city.
The discovery of her small body, wrapped in a duvet cover and weighed down by rocks, renewed calls for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women.