Two Halton Children’s Aid Society adoption workers and a director were fired in the wake of the death of a 12-year-old boy at the centre of a harrowing Ontario murder trial, court heard Friday.

The Halton CAS was supervising the adoption of the boy and his younger brother after they were placed in the home of Becky Hamber and Brandy Cooney in Burlington. The couple are on trial for the first-degree murder of the older boy, with defence lawyers trying to show that systemic failures were responsible for his death, not an intentional murder.

The boy, who died Dec. 21, 2022, in his basement bedroom, had lived there with his brother since the autumn of 2017, after leaving a foster family in Ottawa. The women, who were in the process of adopting the boys, are also charged with failing to provi

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