KEY POINTS:
A woman and her partner accused of murdering her three-year-old son were crying and panicking as ambulance staff treated him after an alleged beating, according to the victim's older stepbrother.
The nine-year-old told an interviewer from Child, Youth and Family that the accused pair were crying as his stepbrother was being treated on January 31 last year before the ambulance took him away from their home in Otara, south Auckland.
The boy died the next day in Starship Hospital in Auckland.
A video of the interview, recorded the day after the victim died, was played this morning on the second day of the trial in the High Court in Auckland of the boy's 32-year-old mother and her 27-year-old partner.
The accused pair deny charges of murder, wilful ill-treatment and failing to seek medical treatment for the boy.
They have name suppression, meaning the victim and the other children at the house cannot be named.
Crown lawyers say the boy, who moved in with his mother less than three months before his death, was regularly hit with a variety of weapons for soiling his pants and bet-wetting.
On the day before his death he had been hit after defecating in the bathroom and the kitchen.
The stepbrother said he heard a bang and a short time later went to see ambulance staff treating the boy and could see that his face was purple.
The accused couple were panicking as they watched the treatment with several other relatives, he said.
The trial before a jury of seven women and five men is expected to take three weeks.
- NZPA
