Source: Radio New Zealand
Doctors found Soul’s skull was broken in two places. Supplied / Facebook
The aunt of a Canterbury baby who died of catastrophic injuries wishes she had told her sister to leave her partner, an inquest has heard.
Soul Turany was almost four months old when he died in August 2014, although how he came to suffer his injuries remains a mystery more than a decade later.
An inquest has heard Soul was taken to hospital on the morning of 30 August after emergency services were called to the rural home near Darfield that he shared with his mother Storme Turany and her then-partner Tony Farmer.
Doctors found Soul’s skull was broken in two places. He was bleeding in one eye and over a vast tract of his brain.
Turany’s sister Skye Lamborn told coroner Ian Telford on Monday that she was extremely close to her sister and nephew, and loved him like one of her own children.
“He was perfect,” she said.
“He was a good baby. We loved him from the time we saw the line on the strip. We were looking forward very much to him growing up with us.”
She said Turany and Soul had lived with her and her family before moving to a worker’s residence on the farm Lamborn managed with her husband.
Detective Superintendent Darryl Sweeney, who was in charge of the investigation, earlier told the inquest there were only two sensible possibilities as to who injured Soul – Storme Turany or Tony Farmer.
Lamborn told the coroner that Turany had told her Soul did not like Farmer.
“Tony didn’t have much at all to do with Soul,” she said.
Lamborn said Turany did not like the way Farmer held her son.
“She’d say that he would hold him with his head up, where he couldn’t breathe. She’d said that a few times. I don’t know why I didn’t listen more.”
When asked if there was any support she wished she had offered her sister, Lamborn said: “I wish I had listened about Tony more”.
“He was just nobody in our lives and in hindsight, I probably would have had a better talk to her about you not maybe being a bit fussier with your choice of partner,” she said.
Lamborn was asked if Turany had ever hurt Soul.
“Definitely not,” she replied.
On the morning Soul was injured, Turany called Lamborn.
Many phone calls from that morning were recorded and played at the inquest, but the conversation between the sisters was not.
When asked if her sister had disclosed injuring Soul during the call, Lamborn said no.
She was shocked when she discovered Soul’s injuries were not accidental.
“I didn’t think for a second that is what it was at that time, I thought they must have been wrong,” she said.
When asked if there had been any instance of anyone hurting Soul, Lamborn said there was an occasion when Turany raised concerns about Farmer’s treatment of her son.
“There was an instance when Storme came out of the bedroom. She was living with me. She was a bit shaken up and Tony had been in the bedroom with Soul and he’d put a cloth over his face and she’d gotten upset about this, so she’d come out and asked me if this was normal,” she said.
“I just remember saying ‘no, that is not normal’ and it gave me the willies ever since.”
Farmer had explained it was to help Soul sleep, Lamborn said.
The inquest also heard on Monday from a midwife and Plunket community health worker who said Soul was happy, healthy and well-cared for until his death.
The inquest will hear from Turany and Farmer later this week.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand