A two-year-old girl screamed she ‘didn’t want to go home’ just days before she was killed by her stepfather, a murder trial has heard.
Little Lola James pleaded with her mum’s best friend that she did not want to go home to stepfather Kyle Bevan, 31.
The court heard friend Casey Morgan urged mother Sinead James, 30, to leave her ‘angry and aggressive’ partner in the weeks leading up to the attack.
Giving evidence at Swansea Crown Court, Miss Morgan said James repeatedly left Lola with her while Bevan took drugs and acted aggressively inside the home.
Miss Morgan said: ‘Sinead’s house was dirty and horrible. Lola didn’t want to go home. She was screaming she didn’t want to go home.’
The court heard Miss Morgan made multiple attempts to get James to leave Bevan before he showed up at her house ‘foaming at the mouth’.
She said: ‘I told Sinead that she wasn’t getting Lola back until she got rid of him.
‘I said if Sinead didn’t get rid of him, he would hurt her. Something bad is going to happen to Sinead.’
The court heard James had taken Lola to Miss Morgan’s house on the evening of May 14, 2020, just two months before the attack.
Miss Morgan said she received a call from her friend with ‘commotion’ in the background and knew she needed to meet her straight away.
She said: ‘She phoned me. She said you need to come and get Lola. She sounded scared. She was crying. You could hear a commotion going on.
‘I knew I had to go. I knew I had to put my shoes on and I had to go.
‘When I met her she told me he was smashing up the house and he had punched a light switch and it was off. She said he was going mad. He was losing the plot.
‘I was angry at Sinead because she didn’t stay at my house and settle Lola. She just went and carried on with him.’
The trial also heard from a top doctor who ruled out that massive injuries suffered by the two-year-old girl were caused by the family dog knocking her down the stairs.
Expert witness Ian Simmons, a consultant paediatric ophthalmologist, told of multiple blood spots behind Lola’s eyes.
He confirmed he read the explanation from stepfather Kyle Bevan how Lola suffered the injures after being pushed by their pet bulldog and has seen photographs of the carpeted stairway.
Mr Simmons said: ‘It is highly unlikely they would have been caused by a fall down 10 carpeted stairs’, as put forward by Mr Bevan.
‘The most likely cause of her injuries is a form of abusive head trauma, possibly with some form of impact.’
He agreed that a recent study found that when discovered in the presence of head injuries, retinal haemorrhages have a 91 per cent probability of being caused by abuse.
The court heard extensive bleeding was found in all four quadrants of both Lola’s eyes.
The jury was told that there were two large macular haemorrhages in Lola’s right eye, and that across both eyes there were blood-points which were ‘too numerous to count’.
James, of Neyland in Wales, denies causing or allowing the death of a child. Bevan, of Aberystwyth, denies murder.
The trial, due to last four weeks, continues.