Updated: 6:23am – This is the moment a killer babysitter lied to police about how a baby came to be critically injured – and her reaction when an officer revealed how gravely ill the little girl was.
Shayal Upashna Sami brazenly told a detective the infant fell from a couch while she cooked nearby at her Christchurch flat.
She described how her “head was burning” after she saw Aaliyah Ashlyn Chand lying on the floor and ran to help, how the baby’s body was “not responding” and she was not breathing.
But it was a lie. Aaliyah was hurt, but Sami had violently assaulted her in a “moment of rage”.
Aaliyah, who had celebrated her first birthday the week before, was left with irreparable brain damage and died in hospital the following day, January 7, 2015.
On the night of the attack Sami, a Fijian-Indian woman, was quizzed for just over an hour by Detective Constable Rebecca Podmore – an interview that was shown to jurors during her two-week trial at the High Court in Christchurch and obtained by Stuff.
Speaking in halting English and with the aid of an interpreter, Sami – then just 18 and five months pregnant – described how she looked after Aaliyah each day, watching TV and playing together.
The footage showed her laughing fondly and chuckling at memories of trying to get her to feed, and how the infant sucked her thumb when she was hungry.
Describing the moment Aaliyah was injured, Sami, now 21, said she gave her milk before laying her down on the couch after she fell asleep and going to cook.
She said: “The baby fell down over there and then I just ran to her . . . I check her then I saw the body was not responding to me. “It became like my head was burning . . . I started to pick her up and her body was not responding back, or she was like very loose.”
Sami described how Aaliyah was not breathing and lost her colour as she rushed her to hospital with the help of a neighbour.
But her reaction turned to shock when Podmore told her Aaliyah was “very sick” with “broken bones in her head”.
Eyes wide and holding her baby bump, Sami asked in disbelief: “God . . . Bleeding, brain is bleeding? God, is she all right though?”
Told that doctors did not believe the injuries were from a couch fall, Sami said:
“But she only falled once. How would that happen. “That’s what I told you what happened, and how come it’s, the bones are damaged? Oh my God, I don’t know what to say.”
Police did not believe her account and neither did a jury, who found her guilty of manslaughter on Monday.
-Stuff
Featured Image: Sami told Detective Constable Rebecca Podmore that Aaliyah was injured falling from a couch.
