No drugs, pesticides detected in Nora Anne’s body, court told

Nora Anne, 15, went missing on Aug 4, last year, a day after she and her family arrived in Malaysia for a two-week holiday.

SEREMBAN: A chemist told the Coroner’s Court here today that a drug analysis conducted on the three specimens obtained from the remains of French-Irish teenager Nora Anne Quoirin, including her liver, on Aug 19 last year, found no traces of common drugs.

Suhana Ismail, 52, who works at the Chemistry’s Department Toxicology Division was the seventh witness in the inquest into the teenager’s death.

She said she performed a pesticide analysis on the three specimens on the same date, but did not find any traces of pesticide.

“Apart from the analysis on the liver specimen labelled ‘Nora Anne Quoirin’, I also conducted tests on two other specimens — peritoneal fluid from the abdomen and psoas muscles found in the hips or buttocks.

“The organophosphate and organochlorine pesticides are commonly used in the agricultural industry,” she said in today’s proceedings before coroner Maimoonah Aid.

When asked why she only conducted an analysis on drugs and pesticides, Suhana said that was because the toxicology division only did analysis of these two substances.

Another chemist, Saiful Fazamil Mohd Ali, who was also the eighth witness in the inquest, said an analysis was done on two soil samples obtained underneath Nora Anne’s body and from the vicinity where the body was found.

He said both samples were most likely from the same source.

“I did an analysis by looking at the soil characteristics and comparing both samples. I believe that both are likely from the same source,” he said.

When Maimoonah asked why it was “likely”, Saiful said the Chemistry Department did not have access to nationwide land density data and the analysis was conducted based on the two soil samples received from the police on Aug 16, 2019.

Nora Anne, 15, went missing on Aug 4, last year, a day after she and her family arrived in Malaysia for a two-week holiday at a resort here.

Nora Anne’s body was found on Aug 13, 10 days after she went missing. Her remains were found near a creek in a ravine, 2.5km from the resort where she and her family had stayed.

Preliminary surgical reports stated that there were no criminal element in the death of the teenager, who was a person with a disability. The teenager was confirmed dead from gastrointestinal bleeding due to prolonged hunger and stress. - FMT