KEY POINTS:
Two witnesses have told a court they saw aggressive episodes involving Macsyna King and her children.
In one incident, she allegedly dumped one of the Kahui twins into a cot and in the other, her oldest son's head smacked into a door.
But both witnesses came under fire
from the Crown, which accused them of lying and exaggerating evidence.
Manaaki Poto, a whanau support worker at Middlemore Hospital, broke down as she told how she wished she'd done more for the twins.
Ms Poto met Ms King and Chris Kahui when their premature twins, Cru and Chris Kahui, were at the hospital's neo-natal unit.
Kahui is on trial in the High Court at Auckland for murdering Chris and Cru when they were 3 months old. He denies assaulting them and says someone else, probably Ms King, inflicted the injuries that ultimately killed them.
Ms Poto told the jury yesterday of witnessing a heated argument between Ms King and Kahui which erupted when Kahui couldn't find any baby wipes.
Ms King started screaming and swearing at Kahui to get some wipes for the babies, Ms Poto said.
"It was all one way, voices raised," she said.
The yelling was so intense Ms Poto closed the curtains so other patients and hospital staff couldn't hear.
She asked Ms King to "tone down" her language before Ms King "dumped" the baby into a cot.
After she was sure Kahui wasn't going to retaliate she turned to what was happening at the cot.
Defence lawyer Lorraine Smith asked her to demonstrate to the jury how Ms King was supposed to have put the baby down.
Crying, Ms Poto stood and mimicked how Ms King put the child down and then described how she roughly changed his nappy.
"She dumped the baby in the cot, still swearing, and grabbed the wipes.
"She just lifted it up and shoved the nappy underneath."
Under cross-examination by Crown lawyer Richard Marchant, Ms Poto was asked why she hadn't documented the rough nappy changing.
She replied she had documented the aggressiveness but not the rough changing because she hoped to get the parents behaving appropriately.
However, after re-reading her notes she was forced to admit she hadn't noted any aggressive behaviour.
Mr Marchant said there had been no documentation because what she was telling the court never happened.
Ms Poto: "No. Don't go there. It did happen. I know what I saw."
But he continually put it to her that if she saw something she considered was serious enough she would have recorded it.
Ms Poto said she had reflected on her practices because it hadn't been recorded but insisted she had witnessed aggressive behaviour.
She also denied being related to Kahui, saying she had never met him until he came into the neonatal unit.
Mr Marchant put it to her that there was a connection between her family and that of Kahui's mother. Ms Poto told the court her nephew had married someone with the same surname as Kahui's mother but to her knowledge the families were not related.
Kahui's cousin Eugine Heteraka told the court of his first meeting with Ms King. He said she came into the room "reeking of beer" and grabbed Shayne, their oldest child, out of Kahui's hands.
"Shayne was pretty much screaming his little head off after having his little arms almost yanked out of their sockets," Mr Heteraka said.
She then allegedly stormed out of the room, banging Shayne's forehead on the door as she left.
Crown prosecutor Simon Mount asked if he was exaggerating what he saw and "talking up" the evidence in order to help his cousin out. Mr Heteraka said that was not so.
He agreed that Kahui would be a better judge of how good a mother Ms King was because Kahui had spent more time with her.