An Australian woman hid in a dog kennel for an hour after being bashed by her partner, four days before she died from the injuries, a court has been told.
Justin Turner, 32, pleaded guilty on Friday in the Supreme Court in Warrnambool, Victoria, to the manslaughter of his partner Kylie Cay.
Justice Terence Forrest heard that Cay, 44, died in her home in Port Fairy, in southwest Victoria, on June 21 last year after being discharged from hospital.
She was found by her mother and her son in the house on the afternoon of June 22.
Turner was in police custody at the time, after being charged with assaulting Cay four days before her death.
Crown prosecutor Raymond Gibson said Cay had suffered a painful, lonely and miserable death.
An autopsy found Cay had a ruptured spleen and had suffered blunt force trauma to her torso and chest, which resulted in two fractured ribs.
She had four healed rib fractures and multiple bruises, and died of internal blood loss.
The court was told Turner and Cay had a relationship which involved domestic violence fuelled by alcohol. At the time of her death, an intervention order was in place.
On the night of June 18 last year, Turner went berserk because he couldn’t find his cigarettes, the court was told.
He lifted Cay up by the neck, held a knife to her throat, dragged her around by the hair and hit her on the top of her feet with a hammer, which was used to shut a broken door.
He also stomped on her chest.
Following the attack,
Cay hid in a kennel with her dog while Turner searched for her for about an hour.
She went to the Port Fairy hospital and told a nurse she was beaten up by her partner. She thought her ribs and collarbone were broken.
“He’s going to kill me,” she told the nurse.
Cay was transferred to the Warrnambool Base Hospital and was treated for her rib fractures and a dislocated collarbone before being discharged on June 20.
The Emma House domestic violence service was called and a worker noted Cay was dirty, covered in dog hair and had difficulty walking due to her injuries.
The worker said Cay claimed Turner threatened to slit her dog’s throat and threatened to kill her children. He sometimes choked her to the point of unconsciousness, she said, and she knew one day he would go too far.
In a victim impact statement, Cay’s son Seth said following his mother’s death his life had lost all colour and had gone grey.
He said his mother was the person he relied on most for advice but she was now gone forever, and he would have to make it on his own.
Barrister Jarrod Williams said Turner – who has a significant prior criminal history involving violence and had served jail terms – suffered from severe alcohol use disorder.
In a report handed up, Turner said he felt “s**t” about Ms Cay’s death.
“I feel really s**t about it all. I think about it it every day. It makes me depressed and sick,” he said.
Williams said if the case had gone to trial then the issue of cause of death could have been litigated. He said his client’s mother was also suffering lung cancer.
Justice Forrest said the case involved a manslaughter toward the severe end of the scale, involving the beating death of a defenceless woman in a domestic violence setting.
He will sentence Turner in about five weeks.
-Stuff
