MOTHER ON TRIAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26769, 12 May 1948, Page 6

MOTHER ON TRIAL

MURDER ALLEGED DEATH OF YOUNG GIRL CROWN OUTLINES EVIDENCE P.A. WANGANUI, May 11. The death of a four-year-old girl at Ohakune on December 3 last resulted in the appearance in the Supreme Court here to-day of the child’s mother, Margaret Mary Teresa Loo, a married woman, aged 26, who pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder. The trial is being heard before Mr Justice Cornish and a jury. Mr N. R. Bain, Crown Prosecutor at Wanganui, is conducting the case for the Crown, and Mr G. Skelton, of Auckland, is appearing for the accused. Mr Bain, in outlining to the jury the evidence the Crown proposed to call, said that the accused was charged with the murder of her illegitimate child, Gale Kingo. ' Evidence would show that Gale was one of two illegitimate children of the accused and had been living with her mother, who was married to a Chinese. On December 3 the child suffered an injury, and evidence would be called to show that the accused took the child to a doctor’s surgery, where he found an indentation at the base of the skull. The accused’s explanation to the doctor was that this injury had occurred when the child fell while taking a rockihg horse into the backyard. The child was in a grave condition, deeply unconscious, and was admitted to the Raetihi Hospital, where an operation was performed, but she died later. The police at that stage had no reason to suspect that the accused’s story was not true, said Mr Bain, but an attendant at the doctor’s surgefy would sav that the accused asked her whether the doctor would 'believe the story of how the child had come by its injury. Later the accused had been interviewed by the police and had made the same statement as she had made at the inquest, but when she came to the part where she said the injury had been caused by a fall when the child was taking a rocking horse into the backyard the accused said this was all lies and wanted then to tell the truth. Mr Bain said that the Crown would say that the accused had volunteered then a statement that she herself deliberately caused the injury to the child by thrusting its head back against the bars of a chair and that she had lost her temper because the child was crying. The body of the child had been exhumed. Mr Bain added, and medical evidence would b'e called from a pathologist w,ho had made a detailed examination. Gladys Edith Garmonsway, a nurse at Dr L. E. Jordan’s surgery in Ohakune, said that the accused brought the child to the surgery and said it had fallen down steps with a rocking horse Later, said witness, the accused had asked her if the doctor would believe that the child had fallen down the steps. The case was adjourned till to-mor-row.