Inquest Hears From Mother and Step- Father

By 250 News

The mother of a 4 year old girl who died in November of 1999 from injuries received at the family’s  Oak Street home,  broke down several times as she recounted the events leading up to her daughter’s death.

Jerry Walton testified at a Coroner’s inquest that she went to work, and received a call from her common law husband, Ronald Polson, sometime before 11 pm. that her daughter Amanda was not moving and was hardly breathing. She rushed home to find the young girl on the bathroom floor with a freezer bag of vegetables near her head. The mother testified Amanda was unresponsive. Jerry’s  common  law husband, Ronald, told her he didn’t known what had happened. He thought she might have fallen from a metal bunk bed in the basement where the kids were playing.

The youngster was taken to PGRH, then transferred to Children’s Hospital in Vancouver where she died of injuries that included a skull fracture and injuries which were consistent with someone being shaken. Amanda also had injuries to other parts of her body.

At the time, the  RCMP said the injuries could not have been as the result of a fall from a bunk bed  or a fall down some stair which also was suggested.

Ronald Polson, who also took the stand, said he moved in with Jerry and her four children. He said the matter of discipline was that of the mothe’s although he did verbally scold the children. The children, Polson said, were all very normal.

On the night of the Armada’s injuries, he said he came home after stopping at work for a few beers. “I brought home some hamburgers” he said “to make up for the fact that I was late.”  The older daughter of the family, Ashley, said she found her sister lying at the bottom of the stairs and carried her to the top where Polson came to help. “She was kind of dragging here by the arms” Polson said. “She looked like she had been knocked out, there was no blood on her she just wasn’t responding to anything. I don’t know what happened” he said, “whether she fell down the stair or off the bunk beds, because all of the children had just come up to say good night to me and they then went back downstairs.”

The inquest comes 8 years after the little girl’s death. Polson said after Armada’s death “I never went back to that house.”

He and Jerry still live together.   

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