Nurse tells of hours spent with alleged killer
A BRAVE nurse in a remote Far North community has told of sitting at kitchen table for “hours” with a man she believed had just killed his partner, waiting for police.
Robyn Taylor was called to the Mapoon house of Soan Koko, 40, and his de facto partner, Bonita Claudie, about 11pm on October 12, 2018 to find Ms Claudie’s lifeless body on the bathroom floor and Mr
Koko doing “desperate” CPR while shouting “come on, come on” and “don’t do this to me”.
During Mr Koko’s committal hearing for murder in the Cairns Magistrates Court on Monday, Ms Taylor said she realised immediately the 22year-old woman was dead but on the urging of several people in the house, she did two minutes of CPR before declaring her deceased.
She said she sat with Mr Koko at the kitchen table and waited for about four hours for police to arrive.
“He was constantly wringing his hands saying “this isn’t me, I didn’t do this”,” she told the court. “He was saying ‘we had a punch-up, I tell you straight, we were fighting’ … At one point he got up and went into the kitchen and picked up a butcher’s knife. He said he couldn’t go to jail.”
Ms Taylor said he seemed to be “starting to construct a defence for himself”.
The woman’s aunt, Katrina Budby, said the couple and others had been drinking leading up to the death, and also believed Mr Koko was on ice.
She broke down several times in court as she described Mr Koko allegedly viciously assaulting Ms Claudie as they drove around the community, punching her in the face and slamming her head into the dashboard.
Ms Budby told the court that when the car stopped, Ms
Claudie got out but Mr Koko repeatedly kicked her as she lay on the ground, before throwing her headfirst into the car three times, despite attempts to intervene.
“I couldn’t save her,” Ms Budby said.
“The last words she spoke to me is ‘aunty, jump in the car with me’. I knew in my heart something bad was going to happen.”
Ms Taylor told the court Mr Koko had said that once they returned home, they realised they did not have the house keys, so he passed out in the car while Ms Claudie lay down beside the corner of the house.
“What made me consider that he was saying those things with remorse was because I think he knew she was lying there wounded,” she said. “While he slept, she was dying.”
Mr Koko has been committed to stand trial in the Cairns Supreme Court.
He did not enter a plea.