The first day of the Desmond Fatality Inquiry in Guysborough has been adjourned.
Inquiry lawyers spent most of the afternoon Monday cross-examining Dr. Matthew Bowes, the Chief Medical Examiner and man who initially called for the inquiry.
Most of the questions focused on his reasons for calling the fatality inquiry.
Dr. Bowes said one of the reasons was to gain a better understanding of domestic violence, including murder-suicide like the Desmond case, but not limited to it.
“Murder-suicides, in the setting of domestic violence, are rare happenstances, so one thing to keep in mind is that, although mortality is, arguably, the most important endpoint of domestic violence, it’s not the only one,” he said. “If you want to get an even better grip on the problem of domestic violence, or suicide, or anything like that, you might turn your mind to other kinds of endpoints, like hospital admissions.”
Doctor Bowes said, because murder-suicides are so rare, it’s hard to draw any firm statistical conclusions from them.
Lionel Desmond, a 33-year-old war veteran diagnosed with PTSD after two tours of military service in Afghanistan in 2007, killed his wife, daughter, mother and himself in their home in Upper Big Tracadie in Jan. 2017.
This phase of the inquiry is expected to last three weeks.
Testimony continues Tuesday.
