Boy Suffocated Before He Was Set on Fire, Coroner Rules

The Ventura County coroner ruled Thursday that an 8-year-old Northridge boy, whose burned, bound body was found near Simi Valley last Friday, suffocated while his mouth was gagged.

Dr. F. Warren Lovell said that a bruise on Paul Bailly’s neck indicated that he may have been strangled.

“It wasn’t a classic strangulation,” Lovell said. “It could have been, but I think it was something akin to . . . grabbing him around the neck.”

Lovell said that either strangulation or fear may have caused Paul to throw up at some point. Because of the gag sealing his mouth, Paul choked on his own vomit and died of asphyxia, the coroner said.

Asked if he could tell whether Paul’s death was intentionally caused, Lovell said, “I don’t know.”

Lovell said he ruled that Paul was dead when his body was set afire because there was no soot in the boy’s nose or windpipe and no carbon monoxide in his blood.

The coroner said that there was no evidence of sexual assault but added that investigators are conducting further tests.

Paul disappeared last Friday morning after his mother dropped him off at a child-care program at Darby Avenue Elementary School in Northridge. Firefighters who were called to extinguish a brush fire in the Santa Susana Knolls area south of Simi Valley found his body that afternoon.

Early Saturday morning, Ventura homicide investigators arrested Gregory Scott Smith, 21, who remains the sole suspect in the case. He is being held without bail by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department pending an arraignment hearing scheduled for Monday afternoon.

Officials of the Parent Teacher Student Assn. at Darby said this week that their records include notations of at least two incidents in which Smith was chastised for improper behavior with Paul.

Smith worked permanently at two schools and as a fill-in aide in at least eight or more other schools, officials said.

“Our intention is to go over all evaluations of Greg, even where he had worked only an hour,” said Cecelia Mansfield, president of the 31st District PTA.

Sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Terry Hughes said Thursday that investigators believe a pair of handcuffs found near Paul’s body belonged to Smith.

Investigators are trying to learn whether those were the same handcuffs Smith reportedly brought to a school Halloween party last fall at the Chatsworth Park Elementary School latchkey program, where he worked before he was fired on Dec. 7.

Staff members of the 31st District PTA child-care program said that Smith appeared at the party wearing camouflage fatigues and handcuffs, which he was asked to leave outside in his car.

But Hughes declined to elaborate, saying only, “We consider it circumstantial evidence, and it has been incorporated into our investigation.”

Smith also had been fired March 6 for harshness in disciplining children he cared for in a PTA-run program for latchkey children at Darby.

Times staff writer Michael Connelly contributed to this story.