Four-month old Alyssa Wilson was shaken so hard her spinal cord was damaged, a court was told today.
Alyssa's father Joseph William Wilson has gone on trial in the High Court in Auckland for her manslaughter.
Crown prosecutor Howard Lawrie said Alyssa was so badly shaken by Wilsonher head "has gone backwards and forwards causing damage to the spinal cord".
It was those injuries to the brain stem at the top of the spinal cord which had killed her.
A fractured skull and other head injuries were possibly inflicted a week before the fatal shaking.
They were the result of her head being brought with force into something that was straight or something that was straight being brought into contact with her head, the court heard.
Mr Lawrie told the jury of five men and seven women Alyssa Wilson was only four months old when she died in Starship Children's Hospital on June 28, 2004.
He said she was a child who had been physically abused, at least during the last two weeks or so of her life.
