Four-year-old Jenice Fi­garo, who re­port­ed­ly died af­ter eat­ing a meal of fries, was in fact beat­en to death, an au­top­sy found yes­ter­day.

The au­top­sy, per­formed by foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr Es­lyn Bur­ris Mc Don­ald at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, found her death was due to blunt force trau­ma.

When the T&T Guardian con­tact­ed Jenice's fa­ther, Robert Fi­garo, he de­clined to com­ment on the re­sults.

"Right now I am hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with the po­lice and I can­not speak right now," he said.

Fi­garo told po­lice he left Jenice last Thurs­day night in the care of a fe­male rel­a­tive who, along with her chil­dren aged five and eight, lived at his home at Coros­al, White­land.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, at around 8.30 pm last Thurs­day, Jenice was at the din­ner ta­ble eat­ing with two oth­er chil­dren when she com­plained of a tum­my ache.

The fe­male rel­a­tive said Jenice wet her­self and she ti­died her and put her in bed, but the child still com­plained of pain. When the pain per­sist­ed an am­bu­lance was called in. By the time the am­bu­lance ar­rived Jenice had stopped breath­ing and was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where she was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

An au­top­sy was sup­posed to have tak­en place on Fri­day at the San Fer­nan­do mor­tu­ary, but the doc­tors sent the body to Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre af­ter they ob­served marks of vi­o­lence on the body.

The fe­male rel­a­tive who is be­ing blamed for the killing has since pro­fessed her in­no­cence. In an ear­li­er in­ter­view, the rel­a­tive, who moved out of the house on the night of the in­ci­dent, de­nied hav­ing any­thing to do with the child's death.

Fi­garo, in a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view, said he did not want to be­lieve the rel­a­tive had any­thing to do with the child's death. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that the child had sev­er­al in­juries in the past, in­clud­ing a burst lip, a frac­tured wrist and a burn on her tum­my, which had en­gaged the po­lice's at­ten­tion. How­ev­er, noth­ing came out of those mat­ters.

Homi­cide of­fi­cers were yes­ter­day evening search­ing for the fe­male rel­a­tive. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.