KOTA KINABALU, Sept 9 — The first medical officer who examined the late Zara Qairina Mahathir told the Coroner’s Court today that she did not notice any barcode injuries on the body of the Form One student.
Dr Janefer Voo, 32, who is with the Emergency and Trauma Department at Queen Elizabeth Hospital (HQE), said this when questioned by lawyer Datuk Ram Singh, who is representing a juvenile charged with bullying the deceased.
Ram: Doctor, did you come across any barcode injuries on her body? Did you see any?
Dr Voo: No, I did not realise any.
Ram: You did not realise, or you did not check?
Dr Voo: When the patient arrived, we performed a quick examination of the hands and arms. We noticed a deformity on the left hand, which was placed in a splint. At that point, the initial diagnosis was a closed fracture. There was nothing noted regarding barcode injuries.
Ram: When you removed Zara Qairina’s clothing, you would have checked her body for injuries from head to toe, front and back. Correct?
Dr Voo: Yes, but our priority was identifying life-threatening injuries.
Sharing her five years of experience in the Emergency and Trauma Department, the third witness testified that most patients who presented with barcode injuries were youths in their teens or early twenties, and such injuries were usually related to self-harm.
This injury can be due to sharp objects, and the pattern will be similar in appearance to a barcode.
In response to another question, Dr Voo said she was unsure what happened to the deceased’s clothing after it was removed, as usually, the patient’s belongings are handled by nurses and paramedics.
Ram: Doctor, did it occur to you that the clothing should be surrendered to the police for forensic analysis?
Dr Voo: At that time, we were focused on resuscitating the patient. Once the clothing was removed, it would have been placed in a bag by our staff. The thought of handing it over to the police did not cross my mind. My priority was stabilising the teenager.
When asked whether the deceased was wearing a tudung upon arrival at the emergency department, she said, “No tudung, because the wound on her back had already been bandaged. So I cannot remember if she was wearing one or not”.
Earlier, Dr Voo told the court that she was the first doctor who examined Zara on July 16 after the girl was brought to the department by an assistant medical officer and an ambulance team in an unconscious state, but the mechanism of injury was not known at the time.
The hearing before Coroner Sessions Court Judge Amir Shah Amir Hassan continues after the lunch break.
Zara, 13, died on July 17 at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital I in Kota Kinabalu, where she had been admitted a day earlier after being found unconscious in a drain near her school hostel in Papar at 4am.
The Attorney-General’s Chambers ordered her remains exhumed for a post-mortem on August 8, before announcing a formal inquest into her death on August 13.
