WARNING: This story contains disturbing details
The trial of a Langley woman accused of killing her seven-year-old daughter will resume on March 29 in New Westminster Supreme Court.
The first degree murder trial of KerryAnn Lewis had run through the fall and winter of 2020, but still had not finished hearing from all witnesses at the end of the year.
Lewis is accused of killing Aaliyah Rosa on July 22, 2018 in her Langley apartment.
Having concluded the evidence of the Crown prosecutor’s witnesses, on Jan. 6 Justice Martha Devlin agreed to hear from a new witness for the defence.
Devlin ruled that Dr. Christopher Dunham, a pediatric neuropathologist at B.C. Children’s Hospital, would be allowed to testify at the trial in the death of Aaliyah Rosa.
Dunham began his testimony in early January, but is not available again for several months, and the lawyers and judge involved also have other trials scheduled.
The trial was delayed multiple times by COVID-19 issues, including several witnesses who either contracted COVID or were exposed and had to self-isolate.
Lewis’s health was also a factor; she collapsed in the courtroom at one point.
READ MORE: Langley child murder trial delayed until March as new witness testifies
Aaliyah was seven years old when her body was discovered in the apartment of her mother, Lewis, in Langley on July 22, 2018.
The Crown prosecutors said at the outset of the case that they would show that Rosa had sedated and drowned Aaliyah in the apartment’s bathtub.
The trial has already heard evidence including toxicology tests showing that Aaliyah’s bloodstream contained Benadryl and Ativan at the time of her death, that boxes had partially barricaded the door to the apartment, and that Lewis had even spoken of wanting to die with her daughter because of frustration over her lack of custody access.
Lewis has pleaded not guilty.