Yesterday afternoon (Day 2), before calling another witness from Dimensions the coroner, Mr David Reid, summarised and read onto the record, the evidence from Sally’s post mortem conducted by Dr Terry Jones, who is a consultant histopathologist.

The coroner said that Dr Jones had provided a report concerning his autopsy on Sally carried out on 31 October 2017.

He said that he’d share the significant findings, which were as follows.

• The stomach was dilated and contained foul smelling semi-solid, yellow material.
• The large bowel was grossly distended from the rectum to the caecum.
• There was gross faecal impaction in the rectum extending into the sigmoid colon.
• The transverse colon in addition to the dilatation showed early necrosis.
• The small bowel was unremarkable.
• The liver was congested.
• The gall bladder contained multiple pale stones up to 3mm in diameter.

The coroner said that Dr Jones had also commented that the appearances were of gross faecal impaction, producing large bowel obstruction and necrosis.

And in his opinion Sally’s cause of death is:

1a) large bowel obstruction

due to 1b) faecal impaction.