Jessica Mulford in the dock of the High Court at Hamilton on Monday. She is defending charges of injuring with intent to injure and murder of two-year-old Harlee-Rose Niven in Hamilton. Photo / Belinda Feek
Jessica Mulford in the dock of the High Court at Hamilton on Monday. She is defending charges of injuring with intent to injure and murder of two-year-old Harlee-Rose Niven in Hamilton. Photo / Belinda Feek
Warning: This story contains content that some may find disturbing
She rushed to the house to administer CPR on Harlee-Rose Niven, who she described as being “cold” and “looking like a mannequin”, before jumping in a car with the toddler and directing the father, Dylan Berry, to Waikato hospital.
On the way, they came across two police officers sitting in their patrol car.
The teen, Berry and his daughter then got in the patrol car and were driven directly to the emergency department.
Today, in the High Court at Hamilton murder trial of Harlee-Rose’s stepmother Jessica Lee Rose Mulford, those officers gave emotional testimonies on the moment they saw the little girl’s lifeless body.
Mulford is also defending a charge of injuring with intent to injure the toddler in an alleged incident in Tauranga five months earlier.
The Crown claims Mulford, 20, was a resentful young stepmother who was at “breaking point” after taking over full-time care of the toddler with her partner, and child’s father, Berry, 22.
But the defence says the Tauranga incident was an accident after she fell out of a window, and submitted her fatal injuries happened after she fell off the tarpaulin being towed by a motorbike Berry was riding around their property, dubbing it a “magic carpet ride”.
‘Help, my daughter isn’t breathing’
At the trial, the couple’s teenage neighbour explained how she was at home watching movies when a panicked Berry started banging loudly on her front door yelling, “Help, help, my daughter isn’t breathing”.
“I was hesitant to open the door but he really [sounded], like, he needed help and sounded urgent so I decided to open it.
“He asked me if I knew how to do CPR ... and if I can come and see his daughter.”
The now 17-year-old said Berry seemed “terrified and in a panic at the same time”.
“His voice was cracking and it sounded like he was crying.”
Now inside the house, the teen said she “couldn’t tell if [Harlee-Rose] was dead or alive, she was cold”.
“Her head, her hands were really hard ... she was like a mannequin.”
Harlee-Rose was lying on her side on the floor with “puke coming out of her mouth ... like a brown, Weetbix colour”.
“[Berry] started screaming ... ‘Can you help her?’”
Dylan Berry with daughter Haylee-Rose Niven on his motorbike in an undated photograph produced by the defence as evidence during the murder trial of the toddler's stepmother, Jessica Mulford. Photo / Supplied
As Harlee-Rose had been spewing, the teen realised her airways might be blocked so she did mouth-to-mouth, and after about 30 seconds, Berry said there was “no use” and wanted to get her to a hospital.
She said Mulford was “standing away from the baby ... looking shocked, and panicked”.
The teen got in the car with Berry as he didn’t know where the hospital was and said he was “driving really fast that I thought we were going to die too”.
“I was panicked that I didn’t know what was happening anymore ... I was trying to keep calm.
“There’s a baby not being able to breathe and this guy ... is driving way too fast that I just couldn’t think.”
In questioning from defence counsel Rebekah Webby, the teen said she had heard shouting from a male at the house on previous occasions, and recalled a time her sister had gone to the fence in an attempt to calm him down.
She had also seen people at the property “racing” motorbikes around the house, but hadn’t seen Harlee-Rose on the back of one.
On the morning of the little girl’s death, she hadn’t heard any noises or raised voices.
The Fairfield, Hamilton, house shared by Dylan Berry and Jessica Mulford and his toddler, Haylee-Rose, who Mulford is accused of murdering there in April 2022. Photo / Supplied
Webby put to her that Mulford was sitting holding the baby, wiping the spew away from her face when she first arrived at the house, but the teen denied that.
In re-examination from Mann about hearing yelling from the house, the teen said she’d previously heard a female’s voice, too.
‘Tears as officer recalls seeing lifeless Harlee-Rose’
Constable Leah Meagher struggled to fight back tears as she recalled a panicked Berry walking towards the patrol car with a lifeless-looking Harlee-Rose.
The toddler was just wearing a nappy and looked “limp”, she said in evidence.
“Her head was reverted right back, unnaturally ... and it appeared that there were no signs of life at that point.”
Asked by Crown solicitor Jacinda Hamilton how Berry was, Meagher said he was “very frantic, asking for our help”.
She asked him to pass Harlee-Rose to her colleague, Constable Shaun Bell, in the passenger seat and as her leg went past, it touched her elbow and “was very cold”.
Bell also described Harlee-Rose as looking “limp”, with her arms hanging down to her sides as Berry carried her, and “looked a little bit yellow”.
Berry told him that he thought Harlee-Rose had a heart attack after Mulford had crushed up ibuprofen in a bottle before finding her unresponsive in bed.
‘Almost dead’
In questioning from co-defence counsel Nick Dutch, Waikato Hospital pediatrician Dr Hamish McCay said the toddler didn’t have any other wounds on her likely to have been expected if she’d fallen off a tarpaulin during a “magic carpet ride”.
If that was the case, the ride would have had to have happened “seconds, minutes, maybe tens of minutes” before she was found unresponsive on her bed on the morning of April 9, 2022, she told Dutch.
If the child had been left any longer she would have been “dead on arrival” at hospital.
Put to him that it could have been “up to an hour”, McCay said, “that would be a stretch”.
“Tens of minutes, 20 minutes maybe, but no, not an hour.”
McCay said she would likely have had abrasions on her arms and legs from them “flailing around”.
