Auckland baby murder trial: Young couple’s bleak, stressful life in cramped home no excuse for killing of Amaziah Te Ahuru, Crown says

Did baby Amaziah die at the hands of his tired and irascible father Tipene Te Ahuru in a moment of blind rage, or was his death a tragic accident? A paediatrician says the only explanation for the baby’s head injuries is abuse, but Te Ahuru’s lawyer says a tragic accident cannot be ruled out and is urging the jury to acquit. George Block reports.

Amaziah was born five weeks early and lived barely 100 days before suffering catastrophic injuries while in the care of his father, Tipene Te Ahuru, as his mother was out doing the laundry.

Only Te Ahuru knows what really happened.

Medical experts said there was little to no doubt his head injuries were the result of abuse, because the trauma was too severe to have been caused by the kind of short fall on to carpet a baby would suffer in a bedroom.

The man’s lawyer, Kelly-Ann Stoikoff, said there was enough uncertainty in the medical evidence and over what happened in the bedroom and what was going through Te Ahuru’s head, that the high standard required for guilt in criminal prosecutions — beyond reasonable doubt — was not satisfied.

“You simply can’t be sure,” she told the jury.

“And you must find Tipene Te Ahuru not guilty of murder.”

Prosecutor Luke Radich closed the Crown’s case on Monday after a week of evidence in Te Ahuru’s murder trial in the Auckland High Court.

Radich drew heavily on the medical evidence.

Veteran Starship Hospital paediatrician Dr Patrick Kelly said there was “no other reasonable possibility” the injuries Amaziah suffered on September 18, 2022, were anything other than the result of abusive head trauma.

When Amaziah’s mother, Raurangi Richards, arrived home she found her son cold and breathing only every 20 seconds. He died after 11 days on life support in Starship.

Forensic pathologist Dr Simon Stables conducted the autopsy and told the court Amaziah had suffered a subdural haematoma, a build-up of blood between the brain and its outermost covering or dura.

Between the dura and the brain’s surface were small and fragile blood vessels, Stables explained.

When a head came down on to a surface, the brain lagged behind the skull and caused those vessels to snap like chewing gum suddenly stretched, he said.

Radich asked Stables if a child could suffer a head injury like Amaziah’s from a short fall.

“It can happen, but it’s incredibly rare,” the pathologist said.

That was why, said Radich, the evidence pointed to Te Ahuru forcibly striking the baby’s head against another object.

Te Ahuru and Richards lived with Amaziah, their first child, and two other young children from her previous relationship.

Radich described their circumstances as bleak.

“Five people, two unemployed parents, three children under 5.

“Crammed into a tiny unit in South Auckland.

“No hope of personal space or of personal advancement.”

Tipene Te Ahuru, 32, appears in the High Court at Auckland on May 6, the first day of his murder trial. He is accused of inflicting fatal injuries on his baby boy Amaziah on September 18, 2022. Photo / Jason Oxenham

It was an environment where the chance to head to a laundromat down the road and do the washing was not a chore, but a reprieve from the stresses of life with three kids in the unit in Reagan Rd between Manukau and Papatoetoe, Radich said.

Richards, in her evidence, said she felt tired, impatient and hōhā that day.

While she was out during the laundry, Te Ahuru told her over the phone her baby was not breathing properly.

She told him to call an ambulance and then rushed home in a panic, leaving her laundry and running a red light.

When she arrived home he had not called an ambulance and she found Amaziah was freezing cold and breathing only about once every 20 seconds.

Over the next few days Te Ahuru gave varying accounts of what happened, eventually saying he dropped or shook the baby and then threw him on the bed.

Radich honed in on comments Te Ahuru made to police about his own father.

“The one thing I never wanted to be was an abuser like him,” Te Ahuru said.

“And now it’s my son sitting in the hospital fighting for his f***ing life and I’m just like, ‘f***, I am my dad’.”

The prosecutor said the comments did not gel with Te Ahuru’s account of what happened.

“This is a curious way to phrase things if what happened to Amaziah was an accident rather than abuse.”

He told the jury their role was not to sociologically analyse the grim circumstances of the couple, but to look at the evidence.

Radich said it all pointed to Te Ahuru losing his cool and doing the unthinkable.

“It’s the grim reality, but it is the reality.”

Justice Jane Anderson will sum up the case for the jury on Tuesday before they retire to deliberate.

George Block is an Auckland-based reporter with a focus on police, the courts, prisons and defence. He joined the Herald in 2022 and has previously worked at Stuff in Auckland and the Otago Daily Times in Dunedin.