Babysitter Guilty Of Killing Christchurch Infant In 'Moment Of Rage'
The grieving family of slain child feel "hollow" after her babysitter was found guilty of manslaughter, police say. Aaliyah Ashlyn Chand was left with irreparable brain damage after being violently assaulted at a Christchurch home on January 6, 2015, dying in intensive care the following day.
In a statement issued after a jury found Shayal Upashna Sami guilty of manslaughter, Detective Senior Sergeant Scott Anderson said the verdict meant Aaliyah's family could start moving forward with their lives.
The little girl, who had turned one the week before she died, suffered a fractured skull, swelling of her brain, bleeding in the cranial cavity and severe haemorrhaging in her eyes, as well as bruising to both sides of her face, ears, forehead and neck.
Her babysitter, Sami, claimed the little girl was injured in a freak accident when she fell from her couch while she was cooking nearby at her flat in Worcester St, Linwood.
But jurors decided it was more likely Sami – then just 18 and five months pregnant – "simply snapped" and slammed Aaliyah's head against a hard surface in a "moment of rage".
After deliberating for almost 10 hours, they cleared the 21-year-old of murder but found her guilty of manslaughter on Monday at the High Court in Christchurch. As the verdict was read out Sami, 21, broke down in tears, while just metres away Aaliyah's parents, Dev Chand and Anjani Lata, wept with relief.
The couple, who like Sami are Fijians, had recruited Sami as their babysitter when Chand moved to Christchurch with her in October 2014 for a job as a bus driver, with Lata to join them from Wellington the following January.
The teenager, the wife of a driver colleague at Go Bus, cared for Aaliyah six days a week, spending most days watching TV and playing together in the small flat and developing such a close bond the little girl called her babysitter "mama".
But on January 6, just days after celebrating Aaliyah's first birthday with a "lovely" family holiday in the capital, Chand received a call at work to say his daughter was critically ill.
Scans taken while he and his wife kept vigil at her bedside in Christchurch Hospital revealed two fractures to her skull, a subdural haematoma and swelling to her brain – injuries so critical they were left with no choice but to switch off her life support.
Sami repeatedly maintained she had left Aaliyah asleep on her couch and saw nothing more until she heard a thud on the floor, before rushing the infant to hospital with the help of a neighbour. Prosecutor Mark Zarifeh told the court Sami attacked the child in a "moment of anger or frustration" – that for some unknown reason she "simply snapped".
During the two-week trial before Justice Rachel Dunningham, the jury heard Aaliyah suffered a catalogue of "extraordinarily rare" injuries, which when taken together prosecutors said could not be explained simply by a fall from a couch. The defence maintained Sami had done nothing wrong – that Aaliyah had climbed up after waking, started walking along the couch's cushion while holding the back and simply toppled off.
Jonathan Eaton QC argued the little girl was learning to stand on her own at the time and told jurors it was a "quantum leap of logic" to find guilt purely because some medical experts found a pattern of injuries was rare and difficult to explain. Her catastrophic head injuries could have been caused by an accidental fall just as much as being inflicted, he said.
But after listening to two weeks of evidence the jury of six women and five men – down to 11 after one fell ill – decided Sami had killed Aaliyah in a momentary loss of control.
The verdict means that while there is some level of closure for her grieving parents, Sami faces years behind bars, leaving her husband to bring up their 2-yearold daughter alone.
She will be sentenced on December 15.