MURDER-ACCUSED Natasha Beth Darcy's estranged husband Colin Crossman has recalled the night Walcha grazier Mathew Dunbar died.
Mr Crossman was one of the first paramedics at the scene who tried to revive Mr Dunbar after he awoke to a call out from the operations centre in the early hours of the morning on August 1.
When Mr Crossman checked his phone, a message from Mr Dunbar's phone received about an hour earlier said: "Tell the police to come, I don't want Tash or the kids to find me".
"The house was warm, Matt had underfloor heating and a wood fire. It was freezing," he told a NSW Supreme Court jury on Tuesday.
"We had to take his shirt off, bare the chest and apply the [defibrillator] pads. It was in asystole rhythm, there was no shock fired.
"Natasha ... she screamed, she wanted us to keep doing CPR, she wanted us to keep going.
"I took her into the other room and told her there was nothing else to be done, I took her in to calm her down."
Darcy is accused of blending a cocktail of drugs in a Nutribullet and feeding them to Mr Dunbar before using helium bought in Tamworth to gas him in his bedroom at Pandora.
The accused has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, but she has admitted to aiding and abetting suicide - something rejected by the Crown.
When Mr Crossman arrived in the ambulance shortly after 2am he found Mr Dunbar in the bedroom upstairs with a maroon-coloured gas cylinder beside him.
Read also:
-
Second case of rare blood clots identified
-
Walk safer as new footpaths put a spring in residents' steps
-
'A disgraceful statement': ACT politicians clash over NDIS claims
After Mr Dunbar was declared dead, he called his duty officer to ask about the effects of helium before police arrived, the court heard.
He knew the helium had been bought 'for a party', but a family party a month earlier had no balloons at it.
A jury heard Mr Crossman remained married to Darcy and wanted to get a divorce, but he had been bankrupt for three years after his home burnt down in a fire in 2009.
Mr Crossman will return to the stand tomorrow. The trial continues.
- Lifeline 13 11 14
