The trial into the death of a five-year-old Native girl began on Wednesday in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Phoenix Sinclair was reported missing in March 2006. But prosecutors said her biological mother, Samantha Kematch, and her mother's former boyfriend, Karl McKay, killed the girl nine months earlier, in June 2005.
"This little girl died as the result of months of abuse," Crown attorney Rick Saull told the court, CBC News reported. "After the final blows were administered, she was left to die on a cold basement floor."
Kematch and McKay were charged with first-degree murder, shortly before
a search on the Fisher River Cree Nation turned up remains believed to be Sinclair's.
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