A child's car seat was photographed in the Manurewa driveway where 10-month-old Poseidyn Reigns Hemopo-Pickering had his home in 2020. Photo / NZME
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WARNING: This article describes fatal injuries suffered by a baby and may be distressing for some readers.
The mother of a baby who died of head injuries has detailed the meth-fuelled lead-up to his death, including questions of his paternity and bruising on her son’s body.
Poseidyn Reigns Hemopo-Pickering, of Manurewa, South Auckland, was taken to Starship hospital on September 5, 2020, with a skull fracture and a traumatic brain injury. He was pronounced dead the next day.
The 10-month old’s father, Anthony Simon Pickering, was later charged with his murder but acquitted by a jury in 2022.
Today, at the coroner’s inquest into the infant’s death, Poseidyn’s mother, Filoi Huakau, admitted she had lied to police after the tragedy.
“I was fried,” she told the inquest, held in the Auckland District Court before Coroner Tracey Fitzgibbon.
Huakau spoke about her upbringing, and that she started using methamphetamine and other drugs at an early age.
She met Pickering in 2015, when she was 17 and he was 26. Huakau said things between them moved “very quickly”, and she eventually moved in with him.
After the birth of their first child by caesarean section, Huakau struggled to recover in the birthing unit. When she finally returned home, she felt she wasn’t getting the help from Pickering that she needed.
“But I also just didn’t know how to ask for it,” she told the inquest.
She said her relationship with Pickering was fractured.
“We were like show ponies,” she said.
“We would smile for the camera, but we had a lot of brokenness between us behind closed doors.”
About this time she started a secret relationship with Pickering’s nephew, who had begun texting her while she was alone in hospital, checking if she was okay.
This was also the time when her methamphetamine use “really picked up”.
She said she became a heavy user, as was Pickering and everyone around her.
“Methamphetamine was an escape to me ... I enjoyed it,” she said.
“I was a person who hated feeling anything, and when I would smoke it, I would feel numb.”
In 2019, Huakau was pregnant with Poseidyn, and she said that throughout her pregnancy, she heavily used drugs and barely ate.
She said the fact that he was healthy was a “miracle”.
After the baby’s birth, the family’s lives continued to be unstable, and they moved from house to house, sometimes staying in hotels and using drugs five days a week, Huakau said.
“We would not really allow ourselves to come down.”
At some point, Pickering read her text messages and discovered she was having a relationship with his nephew.
In September 2020, the couple were at a family member’s home drinking.
At the end of the night, the pair were in the car with their children when Huakau admitted she had been intimate with Pickering’s nephew, and that he could be Poseidyn’s father.
She told the inquest that Pickering looked at Poseidyn and said his real father was “inside” before punching Huakau in the face as she held the baby.
While Pickering had been an engaged father with their firstborn, Huakau felt a “mother’s instinct” not to leave him alone with Poseidyn.
He would push the baby away and didn’t like him crying, she said.
Huakau explained she knew this because one day, when the father and son were in the other room together, she heard a “slap” sound.
When she went into the room and asked what happened, Pickering told her the baby “wouldn’t shut up”, Huakau told the inquest.
She said on the day that Poseidyn was taken to hospital, the couple were coming down from – and not using – drugs.
Huakau changed Poseidyn’s nappy, fed him, and he appeared normal, she said.
“There was nothing different about Poseidyn on that day.”
Pickering was in the bedroom watching TV when she asked if it was okay if she went out to get some cooking oil.
Huakau said Pickering appeared agitated and did not respond. She left Poseidyn in the room with Pickering and left the house.
When she returned, she noticed the baby was slightly closer to Pickering on the bed, and some of his onesie buttons were undone.
The family of four went to sleep on the bed before Pickering woke her up by slapping her, telling her to “call an ambulance”.
Huakau acknowledged that she lied to police on several occasions after her son’s death.
“My head was in a scramble,” she said.
“... It’s hard for me to clear those lies.”
She said she was not in the right state of mind, was heavily under the influence of drugs and had not processed his death.
Now sober, Huakau said she was able to see the circumstances surrounding the tragedy more clearly.
She said that when she spoke with police at the hospital on September 5, she had been worried that they didn’t practise “safe sleeping”, so she lied, telling police that Poseidyn was in a bassinet.
She admitted to lying about other details, such as that Poseidyn had slept for 30 minutes before he awoke, crying, and about her drug use.
“I don’t know why I lied,” she said.
“ ... In all honesty, I was fried ... I didn’t even know the truth ... I was just trying to justify what happened to myself.”
Huakau recalled noticing bruises appearing on Poseidyn’s cheeks and neck in the weeks leading up to his death.
She remembered having a conversation with her mother, Raquel Hemopo, who suggested Pickering’s family had put a makutu, or curse, on Poseidyn.
Pickering’s family had never acknowledged the infant, Huakau claimed.
After his death, a family member claimed to have seen Huakau drop Poseidyn down a flight of stairs before the baby died.
Huakau said she was in such a haze of grief and addiction, she believed it to be true.
Another family member claimed they had seen her “rag dolling” the boy, and again, she said that due to her compromised mental state, she believed them.
Now sober, she has no recollection of those incidents happening and no longer believes that they were true.
“I would never have hurt Poseidyn,” she told the inquest.
Earlier in the week, medical experts told the inquest that at the time of Poseidyn’s death, he had an older brain injury and a healed broken thigh bone.
When asked about this by her lawyer, Kima Tuialii, Huakau said that despite Poseidyn having been with her all the time, she had no idea how the break had happened.
Starship paediatric intensive care doctor Fiona Miles has also told the inquest that the September 5 head injury would have been noticeable straight away, as Poseidyn would have been unresponsive.
Huakau said that when she returned to the house from getting oil, her son seemed fine.
“Everything about him was normal,” she replied.
“... I didn’t touch him, but he looked normal to me.”
Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro Magazine. She has an interest in general reporting. She’s currently based in Auckland covering justice-related stories.