Nunavut woman suffered blows to her head night she died, court told

A forensic pathologist testified Monday that Savanna Pikuyak suffered at least five blows to the head the night she was killed inside an Ottawa rowhouse.

Crown lawyer Sonia Beauchamp spent the fifth day of Nikolas Ibey’s murder trial in Ottawa questioning forensic pathologist Dr. James MacPherson, a Crown witness.

Ibey, 35, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the Sept. 11, 2022, strangulation death of Savanna Pikuyak, 22, who had moved from Sanirajak to Ottawa to study nursing at Algonquin College less than a week earlier.

Pikuyak was staying in a spare room of the house Ibey rented from his brother in Ottawa’s Nepean area, about two kilometres south of the college.

In addition to the blows to her head, Pikuyak suffered multiple blunt-force injuries to her upper arms and chest. There were also wounds on her forearms and hands MacPherson said were indicative of defensive injuries.

The pattern of injuries on her forearms and hands was consistent with someone trying to protect their head, he said.

Deep-red and purple bruising, with a distinctly rectangular shape, could be seen on three of the images presented to jurors. In another, the pattern of bruising formed an L shape.

“When we see a pattern like this, when we have a rectangular pattern and a pattern that has this L shape, that suggests that the object that likely made these injuries had a rectangular surface or edge,” said MacPherson, who works for the non-profit Eastern Ontario Regional Laboratory Association.

“These are all blunt-force injuries.”

“Could a piece of wood have caused these injuries?” Beauchamp asked MacPherson.

“Yes,” he replied.

Last Thursday, Beauchamp presented a nearly metre-long piece of wood as evidence, which had been discovered on the floor of Pikuyak’s bedroom near where her body was found.

Determining the cause of Pikuyak’s death was a process of elimination, MacPherson said. There was no significant injury to the brain, however there was no significant blood loss.

“Although there was definite evidence of injury to the face, to the head, to the scalp, these injuries wouldn’t have caused death,” he said.

MacPherson said there were injuries consistent with manual strangulation, though he could not be certain whether hands were used or something else. Pikuyak’s upper airway had also been blocked, he said.

During her opening remarks last Tuesday, Beauchamp said the cause of death was “obstruction of airway and compression of the neck.”

Earlier in the trial, text messages from Ibey to his father in which Ibey said he had consumed “booze and drugs” on the night Pikuyak was killed were introduced as evidence.

Court was told that Ibey is six feet tall and at the time of Pikuyak’s death he weighed about 250 pounds.

Defence lawyers are expected to cross-examine MacPherson when the jury trial resumes Tuesday morning.