For more than a week of evidence, the courtroom gallery was sparsely populated with a few reporters and the odd law student.
There were no friends or supporters of Alexandru Radita to witness the first-degree murder trial of his parents, Emil and Rodica.
But that changed Thursday when Sandy Wong, a retired B.C. school teacher now living in Cochrane, came to court in his memory.
“He was impish, a chubby little guy,” Wong said during a break in the testimony of the pathologist who did the autopsy on his emaciated body.
“Very chatty,” Wong said about the little boy she remembered from more than a decade ago whom she taught in kindergarten.
“He loved school,” she said.
Wong said she remembered Alexandru easily, because he was the first student who she had to assist in monitoring his blood sugar and knew he was in foster care.
The boy had been seized from his parents after nearly dying from complications related to his diabetic condition, because he wasn’t being given his insulin.
In a letter to Postmedia, the former teacher said she only learned of the boy’s death the day before his parents’ trial began last month.
“I was deeply troubled and filled with much sadness and anger,” she said.
“When a judge made the decision to return Alex to his parents, we were concerned for his wellbeing,” Wong said.
“We feared that his medical needs would not be met, that the insulin he required would again be withheld.”
