Murder charge

dismissed

A charge against Leonard

Staples, 45, Lord Howe Island

guesthouse proprietor, of having

murdered his 13-weeks-old daughter, Teremoana Tehani Staples, on March 5, was dis missed in Sydney’s Central Court on May 14.

This followed evidence by Dr.

Edward La’Brooy, NSW Govern ment Medical Officer, that the child had died of acute pneumonitis, a lung infection which the baby had probably caught only a day or so before she died.

The doctor said there was nothing to indicate that the child died of suffocation.

Det.-Sgt. C. R. Edwards, told the court that Staples, in interviews with police shortly after the baby’s death on the island, said that he had an argument with his wife shortly before the baby’s death.

“Staples said that the baby was crying. He picked her up and hugged her tightly to his chest to try to stop her crying,” Sgt. Edwards said.

“Staples said he then tried to stop the crying by ‘pacifying her’, ‘Poly nesian fashion’.”

Sgt. Edwards said Staples explained that ‘Polynesian fashion’ meant pres sing and patting his three fingers together over the baby’s mouth and nose.

Following Dr. La’Brooy’s medical evidence, Mr. A. J. Bellanto QC (for Staples) submitted there was no case to answer.

Upholding this, the magistrate, Mr.

I. Forest, said; “It is a necessary in gredient of the charge of murder or the alternative charge of man slaughter that the death of the deceased must be attributable to some act or omission on the part of the defendant.

“It is conceded by Mr. Bellanto, who appears for the defendant, that the defendant was arrested in circumstances reasonably causing his arrest, but not only does it appear from the evidence before me—l am referring now in particular to the oral and documentary evidence of Dr. La’Brooy—that the death of the child is not attributable to the defen dant; “it emerges plainly that the baby died from acute pneumonitis and the death was not attributable to any act of his.”