Sadie-Leigh Gardner was taken to Auckland's Starship Hospital after an incident on March 27, 2019. Her death was the subject of two murder trials, and is now at the centre of a coroner's inquest, held in the Tauranga District Court.

Warning: This story deals with the death of a child and may be distressing.

Sadie-Leigh Gardner was only 17 months old when she died – but she “already had such a big personality”.

“She was cheeky, clingy, and incredibly affectionate,” her mum recalled.

“She loved her people and wanted tobe close to the people she loved.”

There were a number of areas of bleeding, including behind the eyes, and a single linear fracture to the skull.

During questioning by Stevens, Kesha agreed there appeared to have been “one major blow to the head” that caused the catastrophic brain injury.

This led to the bleeding and swelling that caused the brain to shut down.

Stevens asked him if the injury could have been caused by the toddler striking her head on the side of the cot as she was put to bed forcefully.

Kesha agreed that was a possibility, though couldn’t be specific about what level of force would have been needed to cause the injury.

However, the injury was not consistent with the type that happened during normal child play, and would have needed “significant” force.

Kesha could also not be specific about the timing of the injury, but said the child would likely have had “neurological deficit” – indicated by things like vomiting, seizures, or passing out – within “minutes” of the injury.

The inquest then heard from Detective Inspector Lindsay Pilbrow, who was the officer in charge of the police investigation.

He stepped the coroner through an overview of the investigation, and outlined the timelines and events as described by the two adults at the centre of both criminal trials and the coronial inquest: Clancy and Sadie-Leigh’s mother.

It doesn’t appear to be in dispute that on the day Sadie-Leigh suffered the fatal head injury, March 27, 2019, she’d spent the morning with her maternal grandmother, who will also give evidence in the inquest.

Sadie-Leigh had been battling a cold, and was grizzly and unsettled, so her mother picked her up in the middle of the day, stopped at Burger King to get lunch, and then headed home.

A neighbour visited, and Sadie-Leigh was behaving normally – active and mobile.

Clancy was on his phone, placing bets on tennis matches, and Sadie-Leigh’s mum was getting ready to go to a beauty appointment at Mount Maunganui.

He put Sadie-Leigh to bed, but she was soon coughing and upset again, and her mother attempted to give her Irish Cough medicine, which she spat out.

She was put back in bed, but started coughing and was unsettled again, and Sadie-Leigh’s mother said Clancy resettled her.

Before she left at 3.31pm, she checked on her daughter and said she was sleeping and breathing normally.

Clancy said at some point after Sadie-Leigh’s mum left for the appointment, he heard Sadie-Leigh coughing, and about five minutes later, went to check on her, and found her struggling to breathe.

Emergency services were called at 3.49pm by a neighbour, and when paramedics arrived, they quickly realised she was in a dire way.

She was taken to Tauranga Hospital, and later transferred to Starship Children’s Hospital, where her injuries were found to be inoperable and non-survivable.

The police concluded that it must have been Clancy who inflicted the fatal blow, as he’d been left alone with the child.

But the order of events, and who went into the room and when, is the major point of contention.

Stevens is pointing the finger at Sadie-Leigh’s mum, suggesting she inflicted in the injury in frustration before she left for her appointment.

The police position is that any assault would have been heard by Clancy, however.

Stevens told the pathologist the key competing timeframes were between 3pm and 3.30pm, or between 3.31pm and 3.49pm.

It is agreed that the medical evidence cannot, on its own, determine the specific timing of the injury.

Stevens then cross-examined Detective Inspector Pilbrow about why Sadie-Leigh’s mother was discounted by police as a suspect, given the neighbours told police they had observed her swearing and calling her daughter a “little freak”, describing how she would “lose her rag”.

There was also a suggestion that the mother had confided in her neighbour about hitting Sadie-Leigh “over the head”, on an earlier occasion.

Pilbrow responded there had been no evidence that neighbours observed anything like that on the day in question, or that the mother was having difficulty coping that day.

During questions from counsel for the police, Richard Jenson, Pilbrow confirmed their charging decision had been informed by what medical experts said about how Sadie-Leigh would have presented after the injury.

“...these injuries were catastrophic, in their terms,” he said.

She would likely have been unconscious and blind “almost immediately” and, for anybody caring for her at that time, “it would have become very apparent that she was a very sick and unwell young lady”.

The inquest continues, and is expected to run through until the end of the week.

Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.

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