Mother sobs as she tells of baby's death in bath

A mother has told a court of her desperate struggle to resuscitate her 7-month-old daughter who was allegedly murdered in the bath by her father.

Chontelle Murphy told the Nelson District Court she ran into her bathroom to find her daughter Alyssa floating face down in the bath, and the father, Kevin Little, standing with a towel wrapped around him and staring at the baby.

"I yelled at him: 'What happened? What did you do?' And he just replied, 'I don't know'."

A sobbing Miss Murphy said Little was too distraught to offer any help as she performed CPR. "It was hard to get air into her because there was water flowing out of her mouth and there was blood coming out of her nose. Her fingers and around her lips were purple."

Miss Murphy was giving evidence on the first day of a depositions hearing to determine if Kevin Joseph Charles Little, 27, should stand trial for murdering his daughter on March 25 this year.

The court heard yesterday that before Alyssa's death, the relationship between Miss Murphy and Little had deteriorated and she wanted him out of the house.

Little told police he must have slipped in the bath, knocked himself unconscious, and dropped Alyssa.

He had been taking a bath with Alyssa as Miss Murphy was gardening outside her Nelson home. She knew something was wrong when she heard a loud moan from Little.

She grabbed Alyssa's limp body out of the bath and ran to the bedroom to perform CPR on the baby's changing table. She yelled at Little to call for an ambulance, but he could not even talk and Miss Murphy had to speak to the emergency operator.

"The operator asked me to stay on the line and I said I couldn't because I was going to save my baby."

The Crown said Little told a neighbour: "I killed my baby. She's dead."

Police arrived and took over CPR before Miss Murphy stepped in again to try to revive her daughter.

Ambulance officers then tried to shock Alyssa's heart "and that was the only time I took my hands off her heart to stop compressions", Miss Murphy said.

Alyssa was taken by ambulance to Nelson Hospital but was later pronounced dead.

Miss Murphy and Little met in Australia in 2004. They had a sexual relationship and later Miss Murphy became pregnant. Little moved from Dunedin to Nelson last year to live with Miss Murphy and his daughter.

However Miss Murphy said the situation deteriorated when Little quit his job in January after suffering from stress. The relationship was "going downhill fast".

"I told him that I didn't love him enough to make it work with what was happening. He said to me that if I leave him, I don't get Alyssa."

The pair were sleeping in different rooms. Little spoke of having "unstable thoughts" and his normally close bond with his daughter changed.

"He didn't interact with her. He just had her near him. He wiped the saliva all over her face ... and called it painting. He would pass wind and waft it in her face."

Mrs Murphy said she went to a lawyer seeking to force Little to move out of the home owned by her mother, but he was reluctant to leave.

She said she almost always had someone with her at the home so she was not alone with Little, but he did not want family and friends visiting. "He would regularly take Alyssa away from the family into another room."

Asked by Little's lawyer, Anne Stevens, if Little loved his daughter from the moment she was born, Miss Murphy said: "Without a doubt."

She agreed Little had sought mediation over their problems and had been looking for other work.

The hearing is expected to last up to five days.