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An Irish father has described the moment he found the battered, bruised and naked body of his two-year-old daughter as she lay dying at his girlfriend’s home.
Michael Cawley fell to his knees crying and pleaded for daughter Santina to respond to him in the blood-stained room, he told the murder trial for his former partner Karen Harrington, 37.
Santina was found with fractures to the skull and ribs, a brain injury, bruises to almost every single part of her body and an injury to her spine, shortly before she was confirmed dead at Cork University Hospital in July 2019.
A stud earring from Santina’s left earlobe was on the floor, with clumps of her torn-out hair, Mr Cawley told a Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork.
He told a jury of seven men and five women that he had left Karen’s Elderwood apartment at 3am on July 5, in order to look for a cousin in Cork city centre.
Michael Cawley, pictured carrying Santina’s coffin, said he fell to his knees crying and pleaded for his daughter to respond to him
Santina was found with fractures to the skull and ribs, a brain injury, bruises to almost every single part of her body
He stated that Santina got on well with Karen.
Mr Cawley said when he returned about two hours later, a next door neighbour of Miss Harrington’s approached him outside the apartment and said that Karen had ‘gone mad inside’.
He claimed that the man told him that Karen was ‘roaring and screaming’ inside and asked him if it was his baby who was with her.
He said that initially he wasn’t alarmed. He wondered if Santina had been up crying or if Karen had needed to give her a bottle or a nappy change.
Mr Cawley said when he entered the apartment he was in shock at what he saw.
‘I could see blood on the floor near the sink. I could see broken glass on the ground. Karen was on the couch lying down. I could see the blanket that Santina was on (when he left) but the blanket was on her (Santina’s) face. I said to Karen “what is going on?”.’
He said that Santina was dressed when he left her but that now she was naked.
‘Santina didn’t look right in the face. One of her eyes was half closed and the other eye was open. There was a bruise on her left face. I checked her pulse. She was warm. I tried to speak to her.
‘I was on my knees crying: “Please, please Santina say something”. I asked Karen “what is going on?” She just ran down the stairs and left through the bottom of the apartment through the front door. I asked the neighbour to call the ambulance.’
Karen Harrington, 37, is on trial for the murder of the two-year-old at her Cork apartment
Mr Cawley said he was deeply distressed.
‘The guards arrived and asked me to remain outside. The paramedics arrived.
‘I broke down crying. I was crying my heart out.
‘Paramedics wouldn’t allow me to go in the ambulance because they needed the space to work on Santina.’
He said that Karen turned up with a ‘random woman’ and he asked his then girlfriend if it was his daughter’s blood that was in the apartment.
He claimed she said it was in fact blood from her foot. The other woman stated that Karen ‘would not touch a fly’.
Mr Cawley told the jury that he found in hard to take in what was happening at the time.
‘I was in a state of shock. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t sit. I think I just wanted to be with my daughter in the hospital,’ he added.
When he was being cross examined by Brendan Grehan, SC, for the defence Mr Cawley said that it was a ‘privilege to look after Santina’. He stated that he was separated from his wife and was a ‘full time single Dad’ to Santina.
He strongly rejected suggestions from the defence that he struggled to cope with Santina.
He stated that Santina ‘got on great’ with Karen who was his partner of several months.
He said that Santina lived with him in Grattan Street in Cork city but they often stayed in Karen’s then home at 26 Elderwood Park.
On Tuesday, extensive CCTV footage was shown to the jury with a woman, whom the prosecution say was Ms Harrington, leaving her apartment shortly after Mr Cawley returned home.
The footage showed Mr Cawley arriving at the apartment at 5.10am on July 5, 2019 with the woman, believed to be Miss Harrington, leaving the apartment a minute later.
Mr Cawley’s trip to the city centre from 3am to 5am was logged on CCTV at various intervals around Blackrock and the city.
The trial previously heard from Sean Gillane, SC for the Prosecution, that the evidence would be that several neighbours heard noise emerging from the apartment where Santina was found critically injured.
He said the State would call evidence from neighbour Dylan Olney that he heard shouting coming from the apartment.
‘Not only did Olney heard a child screaming, the could also hear the accused shouting directly at the child, taunting and mocking and terrorising the child.’
The State would also call evidence from a female neighbour that she heard Ms Harrington screaming and what she thought was the sound of glass smashing.
The trial will continue today and is expected to last up to five weeks. It will involve the calling of more than 100 witnesses.
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