When police informed the mother of a dead toddler that she was a “person of interest” in her son’s death, it further sent mother Rose-Anne Van De Wiele into a deep state of shock and fear.
“I was scared of everything in life. I was in heavy grief. My life had completely been upturned in a way no one I knew even understood. And so I was scared,” Van De Wiele told court Thursday in the fifth day of cross examination in a manslaughter case involving the babysitter of her late son, Nathaniel McLellan.
“You were feeling like a suspect, like you were being treated like a suspect,” defence lawyer Geoff Snow put to Van De Wiele on her fifth day of cross-examination.
Van De Wiele replied, “I guess, yes.”
Snow’s client, babysitter Meggin Van Hoof, has pleaded not guilty to involvement in the 2015 death of the 15-month-old boy. As the Star has previously reported, police initially focused their investigation on Nathaniel’s parents. Snow spent much of the day questioning Van De Wiele on her frequent attempts to gather information on her son’s case in the years leading up to Van Hoof being arrested in 2021, suggesting she was “directing” the police.
Nathaniel became unwell while at his babysitters on the morning of Oct. 27, 2015. Van De Wiele has testified her son was healthy when she dropped him at Van Hoof’s bungalow, before heading down the street to her job as an elementary school teacher. A call from Van Hoof brought Van De Wiele to pick him up and get him to hospital. He died days later on Oct. 31 of a massive head trauma. Van Hoof ran an unlicensed daycare with seven children that day, court has heard. The trial is presided over by Justice Michael Carnegie. There is no jury.
Babysitter Meggin Van Hoof, has pleaded not guilty to involvement in the 2015 death of聽Nathaniel McLellan.
InstagramDefence lawyer Snow took Van De Wiele through a police statement she gave to OPP detective Todd Amlin who was both an investigator on the Nathaniel case, and their victim liaison, a job that entails keeping a victim’s family apprised of information related to an ongoing case.
The morning of that police interview (Nov. 11, 2015, 11 days after Nathaniel had been taken off life support), Van De Wiele and her husband, Kent McLellan, had been asked to come in because police had “some information” to share with them, Van De Wiele testified. Instead, when they arrived at a police station they were separated. Van De Wiele acknowledged in court that Amlin informed her she was considered a “person of interest” in her son’s death. At that point, Van De Wiele understood this was not a simple meeting to update grieving parents on the investigation.
“I started to realize that maybe this wasn’t what I had thought I was coming in to hear,” Van De Wiele testified. Court heard that Amlin explained in the interview with Van De Wiele that a person of interest is someone who through a relationship to the victim “may have somehow been involved in the injuries” to Nathaniel.
Snow suggested that this information scared her. Van De Wiele replied, “I say later in my interview that I’m scared of everything, that I was scared to get up in the morning, I was scared to go to bed, I was scared to go to the funeral. I was because I had four boys and now I only have three and I have a baby on the way.” Van De Wiele said it was not so much that she was scared of police, she was “scared of everything in life.”
Snow also put to Van De Wiele that she was “directing the police” in a series of emails she sent when a new officer was assigned to the case years later. In one email to a senior detective (the one currently on the case) she suggested police dig into Van Hoof’s cellphone “pings” to track her location on the day Nathaniel became unwell.
Doctors in London, Ont., determined Nathaniel McLellan had a fracture in the back of his skull. He was declared brain-dead and removed from life support on Oct. 31, 2015.
McLellan familyVan De Wiele said she did make that suggestion to police. She explained that she had heard that at the time Van Hoof had two cell phones. “I wanted to find out what happened to my son,” Van De Wiele said. She said she thought police should determine where she was when Nathaniel became unwell.
“Where was she in Strathroy? Was she somewhere else?” Van De Wiele testified.
Over the lengthy cross examination, Snow has been suggesting that Van De Wiele had one reason for vigorously trying to gather all of the information she could on her son’s case, including contacting police, coroner’s, children’s aid societies, and making a series of provincial freedom of information requests related to her son’s case.
The goal was a “charge against Meggin Van Hoof,” Snow put to Van De Wiele.
No, she said. “The goal is to have, to find out what happened to my son. That’s the goal. That’s why I did all this. That’s always the goal.”
The case was the subject of an investigative series and podcast in the 海角社区官网Star.
The trial resumes Friday.
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