Grandparents Testify in Death of Infant Bitten by Rat : Court: The vehicle where the couple’s 4-month-old grandson and his parents lived was infested with roaches and strewn with trash and spoiled food, they say.

The grandparents of a 4-month-old boy who prosecutors contend died after being bitten more than 100 times by a pet rat told a jury Tuesday that the car the family was living in when the baby was fatally injured was cluttered with spoiled food, trash and cockroaches.

The grandfather, Dennis Giguere, testified that he cleaned out the contents of the station wagon two or three days after the child’s death and found rat feces, a rat nest fashioned from clothing and pieces of stuffed toys, gnawed baby formula caps, a chewed seat belt and cockroaches “just about everywhere.”

When asked by the defense how many cockroaches there were, Giguere responded, “I couldn’t estimate. Hundreds.”

The parents of the baby, Steven Sr. and Kathyleen Giguere, are being tried on charges of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment for allegedly leaving Steven Jr. alone in the car with a rat who bit him more than 100 times.

The infant’s grandmother, Dianne Giguere, testified that she and her husband also found half-filled baby jars, a half-eaten hamburger and two pillows, one lying next to the car in the Anaheim lot where the family had camped. She said the pillows were spotted with what she believed were bloodstains. She said the car did not contain a cage, food or water for the pet rat.

Another witness for the prosecution, Dr. Richard Evans, the veterinarian who examined the rat after it had been captured and killed, said it was “moderately to severely” starved.

Evans, who is chief of veterinary services for the Orange County Health Care Agency, said the necropsy he performed showed that the rat had suffered erosion of its muscle and fat reserves. It also had an atrophied liver, an empty intestine and a stomach that was “completely packed” with clotted blood and skin, he said.

Attorneys for the parents asked Evans why he had not preserved the animal’s tissues that other pathologists could examine.

“I felt firm in my diagnosis,” said Evans, who concluded that the rat had eaten little or nothing for 72 hours before attacking the infant and had been malnourished for at least a week, possibly several months.

Under questioning, Evans acknowledged that he had made some mistakes in his original written report on the necropsy, which he later corrected. He said that he had written that the rat was starved on a scale of 1 to 2, meaning mild to moderate, when the evidence clearly showed that the animal’s condition was more serious and should have been ranked 2 to 3.

William Watson, a lawyer representing Kathyleen Giguere, said in an interview that the defense will seek to prove that the rat was not starving but living on all the food found inside the car.

The defense also contends that the rat did not kill the infant because the child was already dead before it was bitten, possibly due to sudden infant death syndrome or a congenital breathing disorder.

Dianne Giguere said her stepson and his wife lived in slovenly conditions even before they, the baby and their 3-year-old daughter were evicted from an apartment in Anaheim. She said whenever she visited the apartment she found dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and on the counter, baby bottles filled with curdled milk, scattered beer and whiskey bottles, and dirty clothes piled in the bathroom.

Only 48 hours before the baby’s death, Dianne Giguere said, she alerted the county social services department of her concerns about the welfare of the Giguere children. But officials were unable to find the transient family to investigate the complaint.