A MAN accused of murdering a 20-month-old girl who died after suffering multiple fatal and non-accidental injuries, likely caused by a number of punches or kicks, told detectives he heard a loud thud and discovered the young girl laying face down near a cupboard.
Timothy Whiteley, now 28, has pleaded not guilty to murder over the death of the toddler, who cannot be identified, and on Thursday a jury in Newcastle Supreme Court were played an interview he gave to police in the hours after the girl died on June 19, 2018. During that interview, Mr Whiteley told detectives he believed the girl had woken up from a daytime nap in her bedroom and had become dizzy, possibly because of a fractured nose she had suffered in the days before her death.
He said he thought the girl must have "face-planted" on a cupboard, pointing to a bruise on her chin.
The jury has heard that the young girl died about 6pm on June 19, 2018, after suffering multiple injuries, including bleeding to the brain, broken ribs, a collapsed lung, lacerations to her liver and bleeding in her abdominal cavity.
There is no disagreement in the trial that the girl died from non-accidental injuries during a time frame when both Mr Whiteley and the girl's mother were at the home.
During his police interview, Mr Whiteley said he was heading out to the back deck when he heard a thud.
"Sounded like something hit the ground really hard," Mr Whiteley said in the police interview. "The thud kind of scared me because it was almost as if the cupboard collapsed at the front and fell over. That is how bad the thud was. It literally sounded like the cupboard collapsed."
Mr Whiteley said he was 10 to 15 metres away from the girl's bedroom when he heard the thud and immediately walked towards the noise, discovering the toddler laying on the ground.
He said he called out to the girl's mother, who he said was in the lounge room, to "come here quick".
With no issue about how the girl died, an agreed time frame of when she suffered the injuries and CCTV cameras outside the house making clear who was home at the time, Public Defender Peter Krisenthal asked the girl's mother, who gave evidence during the trial on Monday, whether she had "snapped" and harmed the child.
The woman agreed that, around the time of her daughter's death, an ex-partner's release from jail and possible re-appearance in her life was causing her "significant distress" and that the girl had been sick and "clingy" for a number of weeks, but denied those combination of factors had caused her to "snap" and hurt the girl.
The trial, before Justice Stephen Rothman, continues.
