Accused mother’s lawyers to have experts review three-year-old’s autopsy report

Brendan Owens (3) was discovered dead at a house in Trinity Terrace in Tonagh in July 4, last year. His mother Michelle has been accused of his murder.

Police were called to the house at 2.20am and found the little boy was already dead.

A preliminary investigation, which could have potentially committed Michelle Owens (28) to the Crown Court for trial, was adjourned following a request from her lawyers at Lisburn Magistrates Court on Wednesday.

The lawyers admitted that it was ‘late in the day’ but that it was deemed necessary.

The boy’s mother, although on bail, is living in the Shannon Clinic, a secure mental health unit at the Knockbracken Health Care Park in south Belfast.

Previous autopsy findings were inconclusive and Ms Owens was not charged with her son’s murder until two months after his death.

She first appeared in court on September 20 last year.

When the defence lawyer this week asked for the preliminary investigation to be adjourned so that an expert can be instructed to review the notes of Brendan’s post mortem, the District Judge Rosemary Watters made it clear she was ‘not happy.’

The lawyer accepted the application ‘is very late in the day’ and that it was ‘remiss’ of the defence team to have told the Public Prosecution Service but not the judge.

“If the court had been informed the stenographers could’ve been cancelled, saving considerable money and as well as that, the production of the defendant would not have been necessary,” said the judge, commenting that the late adjournment was “an added burden on resources which are already overstretched.”

Listing the case for mention by videolink on November 17, Judge Watters said: “I would not like to think that this will happen again.”

The preliminary investigation had been scheduled for Thursday.