Sara Sharif had unexplained fractures in 25 locations on her body which were most likely caused by “multiple episodes of blunt force trauma inflicted over several weeks”, a court has heard….Jurors hear that the fractures were most likely caused by “multiple episodes of blunt force trauma inflicted over several weeks”.
Sara Sharif had unexplained fractures in 25 locations on her body which were most likely caused by “multiple episodes of blunt force trauma inflicted over several weeks”, a court has heard.
The 10-year-old suffered more than 70 injuries shortly before she was found dead in her home in Woking, Surrey, on 10 August last year, jurors were previously told.
Sara’s father minicab driver Urfan Sharif, 42, is on trial at the Old Bailey accused of his daughter’s murder, alongside Sara’s stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, and 29-year-old uncle Faisal Malik.
Consultant paediatric radiologist Professor Owen Arthurs told jurors on Friday that in his opinion, most of Sara’s fractures “were very unusual and they cannot be explained by an accidental mechanism nor can they be explained as any single high impact trauma event”.
Professor Arthurs highlighted fractures to Sara’s hand and the vertebrae in her spine, as well as the hyoid in her neck, which he said was “extremely rare”.
“I have not ever seen a hyoid fracture in a child even in those where we have a very good history of ligature strangulation.
“The most likely case here is manual strangulation with a degree of force above that which we would commonly recognise in ligature strangulation – hanging.”
Of the fractures in her spine, Professor Arthurs said they were likely caused by “high-velocity impact or multiple trauma”, and that spinal fractures are “very rare” and usually caused by road traffic accidents or falling from a height.
