Baby accidentally fatally injured, says mum
Melanie Tapara reaches into her handbag and pulls out a small, metal urn. Wrapped with a pounamu necklace and a chain with the letter C, it contains the ashes of her firstborn, Creedance Tapara, who died in Waikato Hospital on March 1 last year.
He was just 3 months old. “I carry him everywhere with me, he goes everywhere in my bag,” she says.
Police did not issue a press release when Creedance died and his death went unreported by media; there was none of the usual public outrage that comes when a child dies by violence.
Following questions from Stuff earlier this month, police confirmed they had launched a homicide investigation.
The case is now with the Crown Solicitor in Hamilton for review.
Detective Senior Sergeant Scott Neilson, area investigations manager, admits police should have announced that the baby’s death was being treated as a homicide.
He explains that, initially, the death was treated as “unexplained”.
When the investigation escalated, the family were already co-operating and public assistance wasn’t required. “Police acknowledge public notification of the death being treated as a homicide would have been appropriate.”
Tapara, 21, says police have indicated to her that a manslaughter charge will be laid, although she hasn’t heard from them in a month.
She says they have been going particularly “hard” against her partner, Cadel Bell-Toetoe, Creedance’s father.
In a Facebook post in February, Bell-Toetoe wrote: “I ain’t no murderer. I’ll show you, hahahahaha. Full stop, come at me. Yous wait, I don’t need nothing.”
Stuff spoke to Tapara outside the state house in Hamilton East that has been her family’s home for 15 years.
Bell-Toetoe stayed inside: “He’s not a people person,” Tapara says. The pair live at the address with Tapara’s mother and brother, two dogs and their cats.
Tapara says on the night Creedance suffered his injuries, she and her partner were arguing.
“It was just yelling, at the beginning. I guess I wasn’t listening and yeah, he [Bell-Toetoe] started to give me a little shove to get away from him.”
She was cradling Creedance in her arms at the time and they were in the kitchen. She is “pretty sure” the baby’s head hit the fridge when she was shoved.
Melanie Tapara
“They don’t believe us at all, the police, they think one of us did it on purpose, but we didn’t, it’s an accident.”
She laughs nervously as she describes the event and minimises the push, almost suggesting it was her fault.
“It was an accident. My partner didn’t mean to like, yeah, do that really. I shouldn’t have been in the middle with him [Creedance].
“They don’t believe us at all, the police, they think one of us did it on purpose, but we didn’t, it’s an accident.”
When the couple woke up the next morning, Creedance was quiet in his cot.
“He wasn’t crying as he usually does when he wakes up. He was half sleepy, but he should have been wide awake.”
They took him to an accident and emergency clinic, and from there he was rushed to Waikato Hospital and put on life support. “They said it was ... head injuries, brain injury.”
Tapara says they were told early on that Creedance probably wouldn’t make it, and he died a day or two later, in the hospital in which he was born three months earlier.
Police came to the hospital on the first night and started questioning her and Bell-Toetoe and other family members.
She says the following weeks and months were “hard, brutal” as police grilled them. “They just kept on coming at us, trying to like, get the truth, but we already told them the truth.
“They didn’t believe us, they were like, ‘Youse know something, someone has to come forward’.”
Police suggested the baby’s injuries couldn’t be explained by the collision with the fridge, Tapara says, and were insinuating it was “child abuse”.
She says police told her that at one point they had bugged her cellphone to listen to her conversations with Bell-Toetoe and other family, hoping “we’d talk and say something that they don’t know”.
“But we’ve already told them everything.”
She’s not sure why police told her they’d tapped her phone. “To scare us, I think.”
Police declined to comment on methods used in the investigation.
Tapara says Creedance had been well, putting on weight and reaching milestones, until the night of the argument.
He was born on December 2, 2022, after a relatively brief, four-hour labour. “I was very happy.”
She says both she and her partner had good family support and everything they needed.
She’d been hoping to go back to work to bring in more money, having previously worked as a security guard and making burgers at Burger King.
Bell-Toetoe had worked a factory job. Their lives are now in limbo, waiting to hear the outcome of the police investigation, she says.
In January, Tapara had her second baby, another boy. By that stage Oranga Tamariki was involved with her family, and insisted the baby go into the care of a close family friend.
“They were like, ‘We don’t believe he’ll be safe in [your] custody’.”
Tapara got to spend time with the newborn in hospital, and is allowed visits.
Last month, she and family released some balloons at Hamilton Lake to mark the first anniversary of Creedance’s death.
The thing she remembers most about him is his cheeky smile.
“He loved people, [we] didn’t get to spend enough time with him, [we] wish he was here, everyone misses him.”
She is yet to receive any legal advice. “Every lawyer I go to, they don’t get back to me. I’ve been to a few.”
She understands police were just doing their job, but claims some of their tactics were over the top.
“I think the investigation they did was not really the right way.
“They searched [our] house and my car ... and they also took my phones ... to listen to me and my partner having conversations. It’s a breach of privacy.
“We told them the truth and they still didn’t believe us.”
Being under investigation while still grieving is “pretty horrifying, not good, hard to breathe”.
When police searched the family home they found a couple of cannabis plants, Tapara says. She admits she used to smoke it, but gave up a year ago.
She hopes they’ve seen the last of police.
“I would hope they would leave us alone now.”