Scans found object after mother’s death

Laine Clark | December 14, 2022

A Queensland mother was initially thought to have died from natural causes before scans discovered a suspicious object in her chest days later, a court has heard.

Cristian Dino Charles Lawlor, 24, has been charged with manslaughter after his mother was found dead in their home in Brisbane’s north in May 2021.

Lawlor’s sister heard their mother scream before her body was found in the laundry of the Taigum residence, a Brisbane Magistrates Court committal hearing heard.

When paramedics arrived they noted a “small injury to her lower abdomen” but there was an assumption that the mother had fallen on the laundry’s tiles, the hearing was told.

“This is what QAS (ambulance) thought because they did not realise what this injury on the abdomen was,” forensic pathologist Andrew Kedziora said.

He said it was initially treated as a “naturally caused” death.

However, days later a duty pathologist reviewed scans and noticed a “metallic object in the left chest cavity which was suspicious of being a projectile” and an autopsy was conducted, he said.

It was discovered after the projectile entered next to the belly button it exited the left lung but remained in the chest cavity.

The hearing has been adjourned until February when the defence team may make a no case application to magistrate Peter Saggers in a bid to have the charges dropped.