KEY POINTS:
A man has told a jury he saw his younger sister apparently trying to smother her two-year-old son with a pillow.
Ashley Knoll was giving evidence in the High Court trial in Hamilton of his sister Kim Knoll, 19, who is charged with attempting to murder her son at her Te Aroha home on May 5 this year by stabbing him with a boning knife.
She also faces an alternative charge of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
Mr Knoll told the court he was looking for a DVD remote control when he went into his sister's bedroom and saw her lifting a pillow away from her son's face, the Waikato Times reported.
His sister appeared angry. "I was scared about what she was doing, what I think she was doing," he said.
The crown alleges Knoll stabbed her son in the stomach at her home and then tried to suffocate him with a pillow.
In interviews with police, Knoll gave differing accounts of how her son received his stab wound.
Kim Knoll's father, Reginald Knoll, told the jury he returned home to find his grandson blue in the face and struggling to breathe. His daughter told him a man wearing a balaclava had caused the injuries.
- NZPA
