Sara Sharif had ‘rare’ injury never seen by radiologist on a child before – latest

Ten-year-old Sara Sharif died after an alleged “campaign of abuse” in the home she shared with her father, stepmother and uncle.

Taxi 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 uncle, Faisal Malik, 29.

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Earlier in the trial, jurors heard that a pathologist who carried out a post-mortem examination on Sara’s body gave the girl’s cause of death as “complications arising from multiple injuries and neglect”.

Police found Sara’s body in a bunk bed in her home, following a call from her father Urfan Sharif in Pakistan saying he “beat her up too much” for being “naughty”, the court has heard.

It is alleged Sara had died two days before and the defendants had booked flights out of the country within hours of her death.

In the conclusion to his report, the jury were told that Professor Owen Arthurs had found that the location, pattern and severity of the fractures were “highly indicative of severe inflicted physical trauma”.

He added that given the different stages of healing present in the various fractures, they could not be explained “by accidental mechanism or a single high impact trauma event”.

“I concluded that most o the fractures individually were likely to have been caused by blunt force trauma,” he said.

The Old Bailey heard that there was no evidence that she had suffered from any underlying disease.

The trial into the murder of Sara Sharif has adjourned for the lunch break and will resume at 2.05pm.

Detailing a fracture to Sara’s hyoid, a u-shaped bone at the top of her neck, Professor Arthurs said it was “extremely rare”.

“I have never seen a hyoid fracture in a child, even when we have a very good history in ligature strangulation,” he said.

“The most likely cause here is manual strangulation with a degree of force above that we would commonly recognise as ligature strangulation, meaning hanging.”

He believes this was caused between six to 12 weeks before her death.

A radiologist who examined Sara Sharif’s bones has said that her spinal fractures were likely caused by “high velocity impact or multiple trauma”.

“Spinal fractures are very rare even in specialist trauma centres and they are usually caused by road traffic accidents or falls from height,” he said.

In one case she had suffered a re-fracture to one of the vertebraes in her spine which indicated “repeated trauma”, but Professor Arthurs could not say draw a conclusion on when this had occurred.

Sara had suffered ten spinal fractures in the weeks before she died,

Professor Owen Arthurs told jurors that they were in the “early stages of healing” and that they had been caused more than 10 days before her death and within the four week lead up to 8 August.

Other fractures were located on both shoulder blades, both arms and both hands, two ribs and to her collar bone.

Jurors have been shown a number of X-ray scans which showed fractures in certain areas of Sara Sharif’s body, including her right and left scapular.

“I can’t think of an accidental way in which you could fracture both scapulars at the same time,” Professor Arthurs said.

Referring to an injury to her right arm, he said: “In very young children when you twist the bone you can easily break the outside before you break the bone itself. I don’t think that applies here because Sara is 10. I just think it’s more likely there has been blunt force trauma.”

The Old Bailey were also shown a bruise that had calcified in her arm, which suggested it had not been given time to heal or had repeatedly come into contact with direct impact.

“It takes at least three to four weeks for a bruise to turn to calcification. In my view this injury is somewhere between four to eight weeks old,” he said.

Detailing her injuries, Professor Owen Arthurs described them as “unusual” and said they could not have occurred by accident or in a single event.

Asked for his professional opinion, he told jurors: “Many fractures can occur accidentally and many fractures can occur from a single event but in my opinion, most of the fractures in this case were very unusual and they cannot be explained by an accidental mechanism nor can they be explained by a single high impact trauma event.

“My opinion is that the most likely explanation for the constellation of injuries, including location and pattern, is multiple episodes of blunt force trauma impacted over several weeks.”

The Old Bailey had previously heard that Sara had suffered more than 70 injuries before her death, which had included bitemarks, burns and scalding.