Birkdale baby death: Steve Braunias - Here we go again, another trial for the killing of a child

Boston Wilson appears in the High Court at Auckland. Photo / Jason Oxenham

OPINION

Here we go again: another trial at the High Court of Auckland over the death of a child, another young man in the dock.

On Monday afternoon, Boston Wilson, 23, was asked to state his plea to a murder charge for the death on December 15, 2021, in Birkdale, of Chance Kamanaka O Ke Akura Aipolani-Nielson, 10 months old. “Not guilty,” he said; and the Crown then began to set out their allegations of how it was that an adult killed a baby in New Zealand, yet again.

But all cases are different. And the point of difference in the trial of Boston Wilson, a handsome guy with two inky messages tattooed on his face, was made very early and very strikingly by his defence lawyer Lorraine Smith, who peered at the jury through her black-rimmed round goggles when she opened on Monday, and told them that Wilson and his partner Darien Aipolani-Williams were wanting to adopt Chance.

There is a kind of motif in trials of people accused of killing children: they’re not the father, they’re not in any way related. They’re sleeping with the child’s mother, maybe shacked up, maybe passing through. The kid is something in the way. The kid is a drag. The kid is stopping them from living their best life of getting s***faced.

But the court heard on Monday of a loving household in a three-bedroom rental on the North Shore, of a young couple called Boston and Darien, of their four preschool kids, of living with Darien’s sister Azure, Chance’s mother. They were such a close family that they were often visited and supported by the best people in New Zealand life: aunties.

And so this is not the standard depressing narrative, set down for three weeks in courtroom 13 at the High Court. Boston Wilson was Chance’s de facto nephew. He was the father of four girls; to adopt Chance would give him a son. Their household enjoyed a really nice morning 10 days before Christmas in 2021. Chance was given his first-ever Christmas present: a blue two-piece camouflage outfit. Boston and Darien dressed him in it, and sent photos to his mum. The jury were shown the photos. To sit behind the lawyer’s benches was to catch a glimpse of a baby inside a lot of blue. Cute.

Frances Rhodes opened the Crown prosecution. She said that on December 15, Azure went to work, and Darien popped out for coffee with her dad, Rhys Williams. The kids had gone to their aunt’s house. That left Boston alone with Chance. They were only together for 20 minutes when Boston called Darien and told her to phone 111, immediately. Chance had suffered fatal injuries to the head. Police say he died two days later of blunt force trauma.

“I lost control. I lost control. I just lost it. Lost control,” Boston Wilson told police.

“The injuries were intentionally inflicted,” Rhodes told the jury.

“Everything that happened was accidental,” Smith told the jury.

Family will be called to give evidence (“They may well feel torn,” said Rhodes), and so will three neighbours, four paramedics, and 17 police officers. The first witness to be called was firefighter Alistair Turner. He was first on the scene at Vandeleur Ave in Birkdale.

He described trying to revive Chance with CPR, with chest compressions, with a defibrillator - and among these and other details of medical equipment and all the apparatus of lifesaving (he applied a tourniquet to Chance’s arm to expand a vein to give him an IV), he mentioned looking into Chance’s mouth.

He was asked what he saw.

He said: “Two teeth.”