Jurors could be heard sniffling today in the murder trial of Tyson Brown as prosecutors played a haunting cellphone video the defendant took — then deleted two hours later — of 2-year-old Arapera Moana Aroha Fia one week before her violent death.
In the short footage, projected onto a large screen across from the jury box in the High Court at Auckland, the child silently gazed into the camera, tears forming in her large brown eyes as she quietly whimpered.
Gashes were clearly visible under her chin and right eye.
On Oct 31, 2021, emergency responders would find Arapera’s body covered in bruises as she was rushed from her Weymouth, South Auckland home to Starship hospital in critical condition. She died hours later due to a brain bleed caused by blunt force trauma to her head.
Brown was charged with murder and the child’s primary caregiver, who continues to have name suppression, was charged with manslaughter for failing in her duty to protect the child. The woman pleaded guilty last week instead of opting to join Brown at trial. She is expected to testify against him.
Prosecutors also played for jurors today videos that the woman had taken, some of which had been posted on social media. In a Tik Tok video posted on October 24, the child had no apparent injuries. In the caption, the woman paid tribute to the child, proclaiming she would “protect you forever”.
But by October 27, a video found on her phone showed the child with the cuts to her head, as well as bruising and swelling on her cheeks and right leg, testified detective Sung-Kyu Hwang, who collated the footage.
In a Tik Tok video posted by the primary caregiver on October 30, one day before Arapara’s fatal beating, the child could be seen standing motionless in the background as the caregiver sat on a chair and danced.
Earlier today, flatmate Jacob Puri-Hansen told jurors he felt so uneasy about noises he heard in the hours leading up to Arapera’s death that he reached out to the child’s father asking him to check on her.
“He’s a bitch,” Puri-Hansen texted Arapera’s father, referring to Brown. “Been yelling at [Arapera] and smashing shit.”
Puri-Hansen added a short time later: “Bro, ask [the child’s primary caregiver] if she’s okay, if she needs you to come.
“Just be nice to her and ask her if everything’s okay. Say, ‘Is ... baby okay? If you need me to come and be there I will.’”
The father didn’t live at the Weymouth, South Auckland, property with Arapera. But Puri-Hansen lived in a sleepout on the property and Brown stayed there frequently with the child’s primary caregiver. The defendant had been diagnosed with Covid-19 days earlier and the entire household was in self-isolation.
The text exchange came after Puri-Hansen heard banging coming from the adjoining main house where Brown, the child’s primary caregiver and Arapera lived.
“It was going on for quite a while,” he testified today. “We just heard a whole bunch of smashing and yelling and we were worried.”
The bangs were accompanied by Brown yelling and Arapera crying, he recalled. At one point, he said, he heard the child’s primary caregiver tell Brown to calm down. But the banging and yelling went on for over 15 minutes, he estimated.
“Don’t tell [the primary caregiver] or she will kick me out of the house and I’ll have nowhere to go,” he texted the child’s father at around 4pm after telling him about the disconcerting noise.
Less than two hours later, Brown would be searching Google for “how to wake someone up from being knocked out” and the child’s primary caregiver would be searching “how long can a baby be unconscious for”, prosecutors pointed out earlier this week as Brown’s murder trial began.
Prosecutors have warned jurors that they may not like the primary caregiver, who was witnessed on at least one occasion treating Arapera roughly in the days leading to her death. But it was Brown, prosecutors contend, who inflicted the fatal blunt force trauma to Arapera’s head that resulted in her death.
The defence, meanwhile, has indicated it will argue that the primary caregiver is the one who administered the blows.
Jurors heard today from multiple first responders who began arriving at the child’s house at 8.16pm, long after the alleged Google searches. They also listened to a 12-minute 111 call in which Arapera’s caregiver was instructed on how to give CPR.
“I found a young child laying face up on the floor,” said firefighter Roy Harris, explaining that CPR was administered after she showed no signs of life.
He and paramedics were able to get the child’s pulse back and they carried her to the dining room table to continue working on her before rushing her to Starship hospital in an ambulance, he said.
The child’s primary caregiver seemed “extremely distressed” and was sobbing at times, he said, while Brown was calmer.
“Tyson didn’t say much,” he said.
Constable Karl Birss recalled standing near Brown and the caregiver as the child was put into an ambulance.
“Are they going to take her away?” he recalled the woman asking.
“I thought she was meaning St Johns [ambulance]. But then I realised she was probably referring to the like of Oranga Tamariki.”
He later watched Brown punch a hole in the wall and start pacing back and forth after another officer told him that Arapera had died at hospital.
“He was pacing backwards and forwards, saying over and over: no, no, no, no no,” Birss recalled. “He went on to say, ‘It’s my fault. I was holding her, that’s all. She just went limp.’”
Birss said he asked Brown what he meant by the statement but the defendant then sat down on a couch “and after that wasn’t really responsive to any queries”.
Multiple first responders recalled either Brown or the primary caregiver telling them that night that the toddler’s injuries had occurred as she fell from a slide that she was standing on, hitting her head.
During opening statements earlier this week, Crown prosecutor Luke Radich was able to hold the small, plastic pre-school toy with one hand as he showed it to jurors. Defence lawyer Lester Cordwell later conceded during his own opening statement that the injuries couldn’t have been caused by a fall from the slide.
The trial is set to continue tomorrow before Justice David Johnstone.
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