Blood stain analyst talks Iqaluit courtroom through crime scene

The death of a boy in Rankin Inlet in 2017 likely occurred inside the trailer where his body was discovered after he had been struck multiple times with an object, a blood stain analyst testified in court Thursday.

Blood from the impacts stained cardboard boxes and part of a wall in the trailer before the body was somehow moved onto a nearby wooden pallet, said RCMP Sgt. Trevor Knopp.

Knopp was the fourth witness to testify in the second-degree murder trial of a youth charged with killing the 12-year-old boy in July 2017.

The accused’s identity is protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

“This impact pattern was consistent of thousands of spatter stains. It’s really large,” Knopp said, adding it’s likely that anyone who was in that area at the time the victim was struck would have gotten blood on them.

Knopp said that in his investigation, he divided the trailer where the boy was found into four sections: the wall across from where the body was located, a part of the ceiling, the spot where the body was found, and the place where the blood spatter likely originated from.

Crown prosecutor Shannon Stakiw showed the court approximately two dozen photos and Knopp explained each one in detail.

Most showed the various blood stains, with circles and measurements drawn around them depicting the path of each one.

One photo showed the victim’s body turned over on the pallet where he was found, with a bloodied face.

On the wall across from where the boy was located, Knopp said he found 200 stains that came from a medium amount of force being applied to blood.

Near that same wall there were black pails that were not stained with blood, which someone had moved in front of the wall after the event, Knopp said.

On the ceiling and upper wall, there were at least four streaks of the kind that occur when there is blood on an object in motion, Knopp said.

However, he added, he could not say what that object was.

“These cast-off patterns were likely relating to strikes to the victim,” he said.

The young victim likely had been lying on cardboard boxes when he was hit because the origin of the blood source was low in height, Knopp said.

The judge-only trial, presided over by judge Susan Cooper, and will resume at 9:30 a.m. on Sept. 12.

A second suspect, Glen Kadlak Jr., 25, also faces a second-degree murder charge in the death of the boy in Rankin Inlet in 2017. His case will be heard in a separate trial.