The last days of a 5-year-old: Medical experts say Elijah Lewis appears to have been ‘tortured’
Autopsy raises new questions about texts sent by New Hampshire child’s mother.
The sores were something you’d see on someone living in a derelict nursing home — or someone held in restraints. The malnourishment hinted at weeks, if not months, without adequate food. And then there was the trauma to the head.
The final days of 5-year-old Elijah Lewis’s short life remain shrouded in mystery, but medical experts say the recent autopsy findings alone suggest the shaggy-haired little boy from Merrimack, N.H., suffered a level of abuse that went far beyond what they typically see.
“It’s more than just . . . minor medical neglect,” said Alice W. Newton, medical director of the Child Protection Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It would fall into the category of torture, really.”
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