Six-month-old Chayse Dearing suffered severe traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries in June 2016
Devastated family members of a baby bashed to death by an ice user have told him to ‘rot in hell’.
Dwayne Lindsey, 34, from Melbourne was found guilty of murdering six-month-old Chayse Dearing at the Supreme Court of Victoria on Sunday.
But Lindsey showed little remorse to family members as he blew a kiss to them when the verdict was being read out.
‘What I honestly think of him is that he can rot in hell,’ Mariah Strahan, the boy’s grandmother, said after the hearing.
‘I hope the rest of his days are lived in torture, like what he did to Chayse.’
Witnesses said Lindsey had admitted punching and kicking Chayse after he ‘wigged out’.
The little boy suffered a severe brain injury as well as to his spine and face and had received bruising and marks on his neck and genitals.
Lindsey claimed he fell asleep with the child on his chest, then woke and jumped when he thought a spider was crawling on him.
He claimed the baby rolled off his chest and hit his head against a wall heater.
But prosecutors challenged his claims which saw baby Chayse suffer traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries and retinal bleeding during the attack.
Chayse died two days later in hospital after the incident in Glenroy, in Melbourne’s north in June 2016.
Dwayne Lindsey is taken away after being found guilty of killing his partner’s six month old baby
Lindsey (right) is on trial in the Supreme Court of Victoria for the murder of Michelle Dearing’s (left) baby. Lindsey denied he intended to kill the six-month-old boy, saying he fell asleep with the baby on his chest, then woke and jumped when he thought a spider was crawling on him
The court heard Lindsey had been awake for days on an ice binge and the incident came just two days after he had proposed to the boy’s mother, Michelle Dearing.
Jurors took almost four days to deliver a guilty verdict.
Another witness added they heard swearing, stomping and panicked howls coming from the property.
Lindsey pleaded not guilty to murdering the baby but later admitted, through his lawyer, he may have caused Chayse’s death by shaking him, The Age reports.
‘It’s been torture. It’s been very hard to sit in court and listen to the injuries that Chayse had,’ Ms Strahan told reporters.
‘You can’t explain what he did. None of us know why he did it, it’s just obviously the evil in him.’
Prosecutor Nicholas Papas QC said Lindsey’s explanation was incongruent with medical reports, which showed Chayse’s death from a head injury was unlikely to have been accidental.
Ms Dearing and two of her friends had gone to Kmart after 4am.
At 8.21am, she received a call from Lindsey saying something was wrong with Chayse, that he wasn’t breathing and that he had blood coming from his nose.
Michelle Dearing had left her baby Chayse alone with her new boyfriend Dwayne Lindsey in June 2016. She told the court today that she and Lindsey were planning to get married
Melissa Jones told the court how she’d been at Kmart with Ms Dearing when Lindsey called them, saying ‘Chayse wasn’t breathing’.
‘I heard Michelle screaming my name and I knew something was wrong,’ she said.
Ms Jones said she called triple zero, and she returned home with Ms Dearing and another woman to find ‘medics working on Chayse’.
‘Michelle collapsed in the doorway of my bedroom. She was in shock basically.’
‘It was an emotional, chaotic scene when Ms Deary and the others got back,’ Mr Papas told the court.
Melissa Jones told the court how she’d been at Kmart with Ms Dearing when Lindsey called them, saying ‘Chayse wasn’t breathing’
‘She (Ms Dearing) was overcome with emotion and collapsed.
‘Ms Deary noted Chayse had been changed from his blue Ralph Lauren onesie into a white fluffy onesie with bear ears on the hood,’ the prosecutor said.
It is also alleged Lindsey later told a witness he had, in fact, struck and kicked the baby.
Defence barrister Scott Johns said Lindsey did not intend to kill the child.
‘Whatever you think of Dwayne Lindsey, he’s not a murderer.
‘None of his actions came from an intention to cause any harm at all,’ Mr Johns said.