Kennedy was taking care of the 21-month-old and his personal little one whereas Jordan’s mom, Bernice Swales, went to the retailers together with her daughter and Kennedy’s two different youngsters.
Jordan had been sleeping many of the afternoon and she or he puzzled about waking him up beforehand and taking him together with her to the retailers, she instructed a courtroom on Monday.
“‘He’ll be fine, it’s OK, don’t worry about it,'” Swales recalled being instructed.
She rushed the toddler to Singleton Base Hospital, throughout the road, after returning to the unit and studying he was unresponsive.
“I was running as fast as I could, flat out the whole way,” she mentioned in a video proven to the jury retracing her steps with police. She was holding a model as she confirmed them how she had tripped on a backyard mattress and identified the place a nurse had noticed her approaching.
Kennedy mentioned one thing in regards to the toddler having fallen both into or out of the tub, Swales instructed the courtroom, unable to recollect particularly.
Jordan was unable to be revived and an post-mortem didn’t determine a explanation for loss of life, however blood evaluation detected excessive ranges of an antidepressant Kennedy had been prescribed within the toddler’s system, the NSW District Court jury heard.
Swales mentioned she met Kennedy after shifting into the identical unit block in 2004.
Their youngsters would play collectively and the pair started a relationship a couple of months later, which grew to become sophisticated a few month earlier than the toddler’s loss of life.
“There was some speculation that Cecil was seeing another woman,” she mentioned.
“I was actually told by his sister as I had recently discovered I had fallen pregnant.”
Crown prosecutor Kate Nightingale earlier instructed the jury she anticipated the opposite girl would give proof about Kennedy calling her from a payphone and speaking about giving a toddler tablets to assist them sleep.
Recordings from covert listening gadgets might be performed to the jury, together with a dialog between Kennedy and the toddler’s mom after they have been instructed an antidepressant had been detected in blood evaluation, however not particularly what sort.
The girl is recorded saying she’s by no means taken antidepressants and doesn’t know what they appear to be, whereas Kennedy, prescribed the identical substance discovered within the toddler’s blood greater than a yr earlier, stayed silent, Nightingale mentioned.
Kennedy was additionally allegedly recorded speaking to his mom about retrieving the tablets from his unit.
They have been discovered by police in a chemist’s paper bag on a excessive shelf in his cabinet, Nightingale mentioned.
Prosecutors search to show Kennedy killed the toddler by administering the antidepressant, or was criminally negligent leaving him unattended within the bathtub, understanding he was beneath the affect of a drug, or unwell.
Kennedy’s barrister Linda McSpedden urged the jury to maintain an open thoughts till the trial ends.
“A case of this nature can have the tendency to arouse emotions of sympathy and antipathy,” she instructed the jury of eight girls and 7 males.
“Do your absolute best to focus on the evidence itself,” she mentioned.
The trial continues on Tuesday and is anticipated to final about eight weeks.
Source: www.9news.com.au
