A 28-year-old woman died as a result of asphyxia due to manual strangulation, a jury heard today on the sixth day of the trial of her former boyfriend for her murder.
Brazilian Bruna Fonseca was found dead in a flat being rented by her former boyfriend Miller Pacheco in Cork city at about 6.30am on the morning of New Year’s Day 2023.
Mr Pacheco, a Brazilian national whose full name is Miller Mizerani da Cunha Belo Pacheco, has denied the murder of Ms Fonseca at his apartment at Liberty Street in Cork on January 1st, 2023.
Today the jury trying the case at the Central Criminal Court in Cork heard evidence from Assistant State Pathologist, Dr Margot Bolster on how Ms Fonseca, a librarian, met her death.
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Dr Bolster said she found evidence of more than 65 external and internal injuries on Ms Fonseca’s head, body and limbs including bruising to her neck area which was significant. She found bruising to below the right-hand side of Ms Fonseca’s jawbone and down the left side of her neck consistent with manual strangulation.
“Extensive bruising is in keeping with manual strangulation, with a hand constraining the neck. Fingers on the left side, thumb on the right side, it would have been done with the right hand.”
Dr Bolster was cross-examined by Mr Pacheco’s senior counsel Ray Boland, who asked if a chokehold involving a person putting their arm around the other person’s neck could cause such injuries.
Mr Boland said his client said he had tried to restrain Ms Fonseca in a chokehold as she had started hitting him after she went with him to his apartment.
Dr Bolster said she would have expected to see a broader pattern of injuries on a person’s neck if they were caught in a chokehold by someone using their forearm and bicep.
“Never say never. You can never outrule anything but, in my view, it is much more typical of a manual strangulation rather than a chokehold from the pattern of injuries,” she said.
Dr Bolster agreed with Mr Boland there was no evidence of Ms Fonseca suffering fractures to her larynx or hyoid bone, but such fractures do not always happen in manual strangulation.
She said such fractures were less common in manual strangulation among young people as their bones are much more flexible because they do not fully calcify until they reach 40.
Dr Bolster said she had also taken samples from Ms Fonseca and found no evidence of alcohol or drugs in her system.
Earlier, the jury of five men and seven women heard evidence of interviews Mr Pacheco gave to gardaí when they arrested him for questioning about Ms Fonseca’s death on January 1st.
He told Det Garda Padraig Harrington he had invited Ms Fonseca back to his apartment so they could FaceTime his family in Brazil and could see their dog, D’eagle. He said he had seen a vision of D’eagle telling him to come home as there was no salvation for him and he told Ms Fonseca that morning in his room: “I want to die.”
“This is where she got up to go. I told her not to go. I stopped her to tell her not to go. She pushed me and hit me. I defended myself. I never touched her with a finger in six years.
“When she hit me I got lost in my head. It was as if it was not me. I am not an aggressive person. I never wanted to harm her,” he said, adding that seeing her kiss another man that night made him angry.
“I tried to immobilise her. I just wanted fighting to be over. I did not want to harm her. In this fraction of seconds, I wanted her to stop hitting me. She fell between the bed and the table.
“I fell on her. I got a chance to stop her fighting. I did something I saw on TV. When I done this move, she slowly stopped but still resisted. It came to a point where she stopped. I let her go.
“I had not seen she had stopped for good ... I did not mean to kill her ... I am not this monster. I am not that person who kills someone I love. I am not that person.”
The case continues.
