Sherin Mathews’s organs were gone before it reached morgue

Houston: When the body of 3-year-old Indian toddler Sherin Mathews reached the morgue, maggots had eaten her internal organs, the doctor who performed the autopsy on the toddler in 2017 has told jurors in Dallas, Texas.

The Indian-American foster father of Sherin, Wesley Mathews, in an unexpected move, pleaded guilty on Monday to injury to a child by omission, a lesser charge, at the start of what was supposed to be his capital murder trial.

On the second day of the trial on Tuesday, 39-year-old Mathews said in a testimony that he raised his voice at Sherin while he was trying to get her to drink her milk in the garage. That startled her, and she began to choke on the milk.

Dr. Elizabeth Ventura, the forensic pathologist who performed Sherin's autopsy in October 2017, said she could not determine how Sherin died as the body was too decomposed.

She told the jurors that maggots had eaten Sherin's internal organs away as her body was discovered in a trash bag in a culvert two weeks after her death.