Dwayne Lindsey (pictured) let out a ‘long dingo howl’ when he realised something was wrong with his partner’s baby
A man charged with killing his girlfriend’s baby let out a ‘long dingo howl’ on realising something was wrong with the child, a Melbourne court has been told.
Dwayne Lindsey is on trial in the Supreme Court of Victoria, charged with killing six-month-old Chayse Dearing, who suffered severe traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries on June 26, 2016.
Chayse had been left alone with his mother’s new boyfriend when she went shopping at 4am on a shopping trip with friends to a 24-hour Kmart.
Neighbour Brian Woods said – via pre-recorded evidence played to the court on Monday – that on the night of Chayse’s death, he heard the residents next door arguing, keeping him awake for hours.
Then about 8am, he heard Lindsey trying to wake the baby.
‘He kept saying ‘hey you’. He said it about 60 times,’ Mr Woods said.
Chayse Dearing was six months old when he died with severe traumatic brain injuries and spinal cord injuries
Lindsey let out a ‘long dingo howl’ when he started to ‘realise there’s something pretty serious with the baby’, the witness added.
Mr Woods said he heard swearing and Lindsey stomping his feet before calling the child’s mother about 8.20am, telling her ‘there’s something wrong with the baby – come home’.
Chayse’s mother Michelle Dearing told the court on Monday that she and Lindsey, then 34, were planning to get married before the fateful night.
She said Lindsey had proposed marriage to her only nights earlier.
Another woman 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,’ Melissa Jones said.
‘She was a mess.’
Chayse’s mother, Michelle, had been on a 4am shopping trip to Kmart with a friend and had asked Lindsey to watch her son while she was out
Ms Dearing and Lindsey had been planning to get married before Chayse’s death. A friend of hers told the court Lindsey had ‘so much patience’ with the youngster
Ms Jones said she called triple zero, and 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.’
Ms Jones said she taught Lindsey some techniques to help settle babies, adding he had ‘so much for patience’ for someone who wasn’t his son.
‘He’d light up when Dwayne would go to play,’ she said of Chayse.
‘He leapt into his arms.’
Ms Jones also said Chayse had a ‘horrible, horrible scream’.
The trial continues.
Chayse died on June 26, 2016, at Ms Dearing’s home in Glenroy, on the outskirts of Melbourne