By Kim Chisnall
Ambulance staff have told of their vain efforts to revive two-year-old JJ Lawrence and the bizarre reaction of the man accused of the toddler's murder.
When ambulance staff reached JJ Lawrence's Orakei home, he was lying on a blanket and dressed just in his nappy. He had probably been dead for more than an hour.
Still, they attempted to revive him. But when that failed, they had the job of telling the boy's distraught mother.
“She just put a blanket on him and knelt down and kissed him on the head,” says ambulance officer Kirsty Roberts.
The same ambulance officer told the court that a man in the room, later identified by another witness as the accused, Joel Loffley, had a very different reaction to the news. He simply asked her “oh is he dead now?”
“I was sort of lost for words,” says Ms Roberts. “It was quite straightforward and blunt for this scene of this little child lying there. I was quite taken aback.”
Loffley told the first police officer at the scene that JJ's injuries were caused by falling off a bed.
“His legs had gone over his back,” says Constable Madeline Roberts. “[He said] that JJ was grizzling and that he picked him up, gave him a warm shower and changed his nappy and put him to bed.”
The Crown says JJ's injuries weren't caused by a fall but a fatal blow administered by Loffley – a blow so severe that it split the boy's liver and pancreas in two. JJ, they say, would have died within minutes.
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