Suspicion - S1 Death in a Small Town | E1 Just Another Day

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Roll out of bed, get the kids to school, then off to work. Just before noon, disaster. A mysterious injury to young Nathaniel McLellan puzzles doctors at two hospitals and sparks what would become a six-year police investigation. Audio sources: Toronto Star, CTV News London

The Billionaire Murders is brought to you by Havelock Metal, the only roof and siding you'll ever need. The following content contains discussions of child injury and death, including frank discussions and displays of emotion surrounding that loss. Listener discretion is advised. A criminal investigation is underway into the death of an area toddler. Police say the child was discovered with injuries on October 27th and died in a London hospital. Do you know what a Russian nesting doll is?

Those are the sets of wooden dolls. They're usually beautifully painted. Each one smaller than the other. Take the top off one. There's another one inside. Take the top off the next one. There's another doll. Take the top off.

You get the idea. They are also called matryoshka, or motherhood dolls. And they date back to the late 1800s. That's really what this story I'm about to tell you is a russian nesting doll it's a story of layers and complexities and beautiful things and sad things and really quite awful things at the center well in the tradition of the nesting doll that's where where the secret is. That's where we find the truth, or get as close to the truth as we can. For almost six years now,

I've been trying to find out what happened to a young boy named Nathaniel McClellan, and why the same mistakes in investigations like these keep repeating again and again. Our story begins in Strathroy, a town nestled in farm country in southwestern Ontario. The town logo reads Urban Opportunity, Rural Hospitality. Built on the banks of the Sydenham River, Strathroy was a milling town in the 1800s, and now, growing corn, soybean, and raising poultry, that's still where the money is. Locals sometimes call Strathroy the Turkey capital of Canada. It's a quiet community of 15,000, a really good place to raise a family. Al Azevedo and his wife Lisa, they've been in

Strathroy their whole lives. That week I was on holidays and that morning, late morning, I remember going to a pizza place here in town to grab pizza for my wife to bring home for lunch. Exact time I can't give you, but it was around noon. On my way home on Head Street, I was heading north. I observed a woman holding a child in an unorthodox way. And I say that because it just looked very, very unusual. One child running uncontrollably on someone's front lawn. If you were walking along Head Street in Strathroy on Tuesday, October 27, 2015,

that's what you would have seen. A woman hurrying along the sidewalk, pulling a wagon with one hand, holding a small child with the other arm. Another toddler running up and down lawns and across driveways. Al Azevedo is one of those people who notices things. He pays attention to small details. Al is a big man, powerfully built, mostly bald with a neatly trimmed beard and piercing dark eyes. The adult,

I believe in question here is Megan Van Hoof, was pulling a wagon. There was something in the wagon, like I want to say a knapsack or a bag, and there was a child in her left arm, and she was holding this child. The child was facing away from her, so forward, and was drooped forward, like as if you buckled. Her arm was not quite underneath the armpits, but were up that high. And so the face of the child I could not see, the child was looking towards the sidewalk that they were walking on. I remember that vividly because I thought, wow, knowing that she's a daycare provider, how is that child being held like that? And why isn't it in the wagon?

The child in the woman's arms wore green pants and a onesie, but he wasn't wearing a coat or shoes. All of this was imprinted on Al's mind in the time it takes to have a sip of coffee. Al keeps driving, not seeing enough to make him stop, but wondering what was going on there. He turns left and heads home, pizza for him and his wife cooling on the seat. Behind him, a white him and his wife cooling on the seat. Behind him, a white GMC Yukon comes around the corner and slams on the brakes. A woman with a mass of dark curls jumps out of the driver's seat. She yanks open the door behind her, grabs a child's car seat and runs toward the woman with the wagon holding the child.

There's a brief conversation. The woman with the massive curls takes the child from her arms and races back to the Yukon. She is sobbing, but determined, moving with urgency. She tries to buckle the child in, but his limbs are stiff. His eyes are closed and his body is moving awkwardly, contorting. She gets into the driver's seat and roars off to the hospital. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is Death in a Small Town, Episode 1, Just Another Day. It took Roseanne McClellan four minutes to drive from Head Street to the Strathroy Hospital. In the back, her son Nathaniel lay across the car seat. As she blew through stop signs, she looked back at his stiff form.

I was crying, and I was telling him I was going to give him help. I'm going to help you. She's going to be okay. I'm just saying, love, just everyone on me. Please. A few minutes before, Roseanne, a teacher, had been preparing for a visitor from public health who was going to tell her students about dental hygiene and healthy brushing habits. That morning really had been just another day for Roseanne, her husband Kent, and their four children, four boys under the age of ten. The McClellan family live in Park Hill, a 30-minute drive away from Strathroy. Kent, the father, made oatmeal for

everyone, plus some Cheerios for Nathaniel, the youngest boy, who giggled from his high chair. Kent headed to work, and the three older boys traipsed down the road through the cornfield to meet the school bus. Roseanne got ready to leave for school in Strathroy. She gave Nathaniel's face a last wipe, brushed her almost uncontrollable mass of dark brown curly hair, and buckled him into the car seat in her white GMC Yukon. In Strathroy, she dropped Nathaniel at the home of Megan Van Hoof, who had just recently started looking after Nathaniel Tuesdays and Thursdays, part of a daycare plan cobbled together by busy parents. Then he was off to her school before the first bell.

Just before noon, a phone call from the office alerted her that Megan, her son's babysitter, was on the line. Nathaniel was not well. He was falling asleep and not making sense. They agreed to meet halfway. Roseanne arranged for a substitute to take over her class, grabbed her purse and car keys and wheeled out of the parking lot toward Megan's.

Seconds later, that's what Al Azevedo saw on his way home for lunch. Roseanne stopping her Yukon, grabbing Nathaniel, and then speeding off. At the hospital, Roseanne stopped underneath the red emergency sign. The only other time Nathaniel had been there was when he was born 15 months earlier. Roseanne grabbed the child car

seat with Nathaniel laying over top of it and raced for the ER doors. Inside, she was confronted with a lineup. It was a busy but normal day for the ER, an assortment of stomach illnesses, cuts and bruises. Roseanne put the car seat down, picked up Nathaniel, and out of sheer force of habit, reached down for her purse to get his government health card. So I went to pick it up, and when I did that, he had no tone. He just flopped backwards like he was lifeless.

A nurse ran up to her, then a doctor. Everybody came running. Everybody came running. They took him from my arms. They put him on the stretcher. They wheeled him back. And I was praying to my mom because she's gone. And I was pacing and I walked out and I locked myself out. So I had to walk back around. When I came around, my purse and the car seat and everything's on the floor all over the main entrance of the eMERGE. I kind of gathered that up, carried it back, and they were all just crazy working. Dr. Brian Lemenchik was the attending ER physician that day. He was working in his office at 12.13 p.m. when he heard a commotion. The job of an ER physician typically involves long periods of

downtime, interspersed with bursts of action, both frightening and exciting. Lemenchik, who was fairly new at the time, hurried out of his office. He saw nurse Angela Swenson run up to a woman who was holding a child in the middle of the waiting room. That was when I started screaming for help. And I was screaming, I think I was screaming, please help my baby. Oh my God, oh my God, please help my baby. That's what I think I was saying. I was screaming a lot.

What follows is based on accounts given to police by the doctors and nurses who treated Nathaniel. None of them would agree to speak to me on the record, citing issues of medical confidentiality and the police investigation. Dr. Lemenchik ran up to Roseanne and together he and Nurse Swenson took Nathaniel and disappeared through the doors of the ER suite.

Nurse Swenson helped Dr. Lemenchik put Nathaniel on a stretcher and get him into bed 6, the curtained acute care bed for severe injuries. Nathaniel on a stretcher and get him into bed six, the curtained acute care bed for severe injuries. Nathaniel was posturing, pushing his arms and legs outward, then pulling them into his body. Nurse Swenson looked him over. The boy was tiny, dressed in green pants over a onesie, and nothing else. She and the doctor looked at Nathaniel's eyes, studying his pupils. They were blown, a medical term that means not reacting to light. We'll be right back.

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Could that be the cause? There was also a pattern of what looked like scratches on the skin around Nathaniel's left ear. A nurse got the little pair of pants off, then struggled to remove the onesie. Hard to do because of the little boy's contortions. Nathaniel's body was pale white. He did not appear to be breathing. Pam Brown was a charge nurse in ER, one of those terms that means exactly what it sounds like.

She was the boss. On lunch break, as she was about to grab a bite in the cafeteria, loud cries pulled her back to her post. She saw hospital staff taking a dark-haired woman into the ER's quiet room. Bed six was a flurry of activity. Nurses and doctors working on the small form on the white sheet, now wearing only a diaper. Dr. Lemenchek stood at the top of the bed, holding Nathaniel's head to protect what is commonly referred to

as the C-spine. Keeping the cervical spine inside the neck immobilized is a precautionary measure to prevent paralysis. Nurse Brown started an IV, inserting a needle into the bone of Nathaniel's leg, allowing fluids to enter his body more quickly than an IV into a vein. She too noticed the red mark on his left temple. She told a nurse to page the anesthesiologist on duty. She also noticed the posturing. This looked like a brain injury. Called the ambulance, Brown told another nurse.

Strathroy was a good intermediary hospital, but she knew from experience that this child would have to be transported 30 minutes down the road to the Children's Hospital at the London Health Sciences Centre. Nurses Terry McCarthy and Bill Ateo came into the room. Nurse McCarthy had done pediatric intensive care all over the country. She noticed that Nathaniel's knees were mottled, discolored, kind of a marbling effect. That means the young boy had been down, meaning little or no blood circulation, for quite some time. The anesthesiologist, Dr. Elisheva Chernik, who had been in the middle of an operation and had to summon a replacement, rushed in and sedated Nathaniel, then intubated him, sliding a tube down his throat to help him breathe.

Down the hall in the quiet room, Roseanne sat alone. She didn't know it, but every action she took that day would be scrutinized. When I brought Nathaniel in, it was life and death, and I wanted him to live. And I knew that I was hysterical and screaming and crying and having a mother standing while these people are trying to save his life is not going to help them concentrate and do what they need to do. Nurse Kim Jenkins, the manager of the hospital,

heard the emergency page for the anesthesiologist and knew something critical was happening. She went into the quiet room and sat with Roseanne, who said she wanted to call Kent, her husband, and needed to use a hospital phone. At the time, Roseanne did not own a cell phone. Too upset to speak, her hands were shaking too much to even dial.

She gave Nurse Jenkins Kent's cell number. Kent owns a heating and air conditioning business and spends his days going from one installation or repair job to another, checking on his team. The nurse and Roseanne waited a few seconds for Kent to answer. I was in the drive-thru at Burger King and I had just given my order and i was in line and waiting there was a car ahead of me for some miraculous reason i was in strathroy i'm not usually in strathroy but i had a job in strathroy and my guys were already at the job and i was coming to the job from petrolia i was in line and i got a phone call from the hospital saying they called and it was weird because they didn't say come quickly. There's been a horrific accident. She

just said, can you come as soon as you can? There's been an incident with Nate. Can you please come like right away? So I hung up the phone and pulled up, got my burger and drove to the hospital. Kent parked his truck outside emergency and hurried in. He was taken to bed six. And he was unconscious and they had him strapped, like secured to a stretcher. And I remember leaning over him and right away I remember so if you're looking at him I remember on the left so on this side of his head his left side yeah his left side I remember a bruise and I thought oh man like you fell like fell you hit your here. I remember because it was so close to his temple. And growing up, I remember my dad or somebody saying, if you get hit here, it's bad. Kent joined Roseanne in the quiet room. They called Kent's

parents, Wayne and Judy, who lived just a bit more than a stone's throw from their rural house in Park Hill. Wayne and Judy jumped in the car and headed for the Strathroy Hospital. They said, Nathaniel has really been hurt, and they're getting him ready to send him to London. It was utter incomprehensible that their little son was hurt at the babysitter's. But nobody knew what happened. Just said he was hurt real bad and he was unconscious. And Roseanne, I remember her saying and crying,

he's not going to make it. He's not going to make it. The Strathroy medical team was readying Nathaniel for transport to London. But Dr. Lemenchek was seeing something that just did not make sense. Yes, there was a red mark on the left temple that was developing into a bruise, but that would not account for what was obviously severe brain damage. There was no facial trauma, no fractured nose,

no goose egg on the scalp, and no depression in his skull. The continued posturing of arms and legs indicated pressure developing in Nathaniel's brain. He was given medication to reduce the pressure and prevent further seizing. The doctor went to see Roseanne and Kent,

both now in the quiet room, where they had been joined by Kent's parents. Dr. Lemanchek told them the prognosis was not good that Nathaniel could die. After doing their best to comfort Roseanne and Kent Wayne and Judy left the hospital

and headed back to Park Hill. They had to meet the other three McClellan boys when they got off the school bus. Two paramedics burst into the ER. Nathaniel was shifted to a mobile stretcher and wheeled out the door. Dr. Lemenchik and Nurse Bill Leteo climbed in and the ambulance sped off for the 30-minute drive. The nurse manager, the one who'd been sitting with them in the quiet room, drove Kent and Roseanne to London in her own car.

The parents sat in the back, stunned. From the time Roseanne brought her son into emergency to the time he headed down the highway, a total of just 69 minutes elapsed. Back at the hospital, as doctors and nurses returned to treating less urgent patients, a uniformed Strathroy CareDoc police service officer arrived, parked under the red emergency sign, and walked into the ER. One of the Strathroy nurses had called police,

reporting that a child was being treated with unexplained injuries. The Strathroy officer spoke to the nurses on duty and seized the green pants and the onesie that had been removed from Nathaniel, sealing them in an evidence bag. Following police protocol, the officer locked the evidence bag in a storage locker at police headquarters. This would assure what is called chain of evidence if it turned into a criminal case.

A team of doctors and nurses were waiting at the ambulance bay doors in London. The paramedics brought Nathaniel into the ER and the medical team took over, rushing Nathaniel to the CT scan room, hoping that a series of cross-sectional x-ray images would solve the mystery of what was going on inside his head. Family began to arrive, Roseanne's parents, siblings, cousins, and some friends. They gathered in the pediatric critical care waiting room. It was tough to know what to say, what questions to ask. Kent and Roseanne sat side by side. At one point, Roseanne got down on her knees and prayed. One of the family members who rushed to the hospital was Pamela Spreet,

Roseanne's cousin and close friend. Pamela is a nurse in the newborn unit at the London Hospital. She was home after a night shift when Roseanne called and told her what had just happened. I interviewed Pamela in a busy coffee shop. There are voices in the background, so the audio is not that clear. Nathaniel has had a fall. We are on our way to Victoria Hospital. He may not make it, is what she said. Pamela got in the car and headed to the hospital.

She found Roseanne and Kent in the waiting room. They didn't look well. They looked like worried parents, obviously. Very quiet and just thinking, you know, like what's going on. And when you asked what happened, I don't know. Roseanne said he was outside and had a fall or something. She's like, I don't really know what happened. Roseanne asked Pamela to send a text message to Megan, the babysitter, telling her they were at the London hospital, that Nathaniel was in the critical care unit, and they would let her know his condition when they had more information. Megan texted back almost immediately. And so she said, thank you for letting me know. I

was worried about him. She said when she sees Roseanne next, she will give her a giant hug. As they waited for news from the London doctors, a tall balding man with a thick mustache arrived wearing a sport coat. He identified himself as Sergeant Gilles Fillion of Strathroy Care Dog Police Service. He told Kent and Roseanne he needed to ask them some questions and he would be speaking to them individually in a small boardroom at the hospital. Kent was told he would have to wait in the hallway for 20 minutes so the detective could be one-on-one with Roseanne. Then, it was Kent's turn.

The detective had placed a small tape recorder on the boardroom table. Its red light blinked brightly. As he did with Roseanne, Detective Fillion took Kent through the day. I walked in, sat down, he turned the recorder on, and he said, took Kent through the day. I walked in, sat down. He turned the recorder on and he said, tell me about the morning. And so I said everything I said to you. Picked him up, brought him back to the room. Barrel rolled him into the bed.

Took him out of his sleeper. Took him out of the sleeper. You took him out while I was getting dressed and then came down here, fed him, did everything. And I left for work at maybe 22. Yeah. Something like that to eight. Like right close to when the kids got so got just to goodbye then a more pointed question and then he said do you have a life insurance policy on your son I said no next time on Death in a Small Town. To be perfectly frank, the injuries were so widespread on the MRI, involving so many parts of the brain, surface of the brain,

brain stem, it was so extensive. I'm going to be just, that it's hard to know what was first, second, or third. To me, that's still the suspicion of non-accidental trauma. J.P. Fozzo, and Sean Pattenden. Additional production was done by Andrea MacDonald, Kelsey Wilson, and Brian Bradley. Photography by Lucas Olenek. Music and sound design for the series created by Sean Pattenden. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is Death in a Small Town.