Impact ‘close to floor’ indicated by blood spatter – scientist
- File image. © Andrew Bardwell
An impact at a height of 5cm or less above the floor of his cell could have caused an “impact spatter pattern” of Benton Marni Parata’s blood on the wall of the cell where he received a fatal bashing, the Christchurch High Court was told.
The opinion was put to the jury by Gary Richard Gillespie, a forensic scientist for the ESR, on the fourth day of the trial of three men charged with 44-year-old Parata’s murder.
Mr Gillespie described the findings from his three-day examination of inside Parata’s cell 67 in the Christchurch Men Prison’s Rawhiti wing.
The examination began on March 25, 2015, the day Parata was found badly injured in his cell. He was taken away by ambulance and died in Christchurch Hospital five days later.
The Crown is calling about 40 witnesses at the two-week trial in the High Court at Christchurch of Steven Betham, 37, Levi Hohepa Reuben, 21, and Akuhatua Tihi, 23, who are jointly charged with the murder. Tihi’s defence counsel Phil Shamy has indicated his client admits assaulting Parata and would plead guilty to manslaughter.
Mr Gillespie told of finding traces of blood on the floor, walls, bed, toilet, sink, and even the ceiling in the cell. DNA testing on swabs taken from five places showed it was extremely likely that it was Parata’s blood.
Some of the stains appeared dilute and had wipe marks which indicated that some effort had been made to clean up the blood-staining.
The Crown has said that it appeared Parata himself had tried to clean up the blood in his cell before he was discovered.
Mr Gillespie said there was one area close to the floor which in his opinion was similar to an impact spatter pattern – “an impact from an object striking liquid blood”.
In his opinion, the spatter pattern resulted from an impact 5cm or less above ground level.
Within one area of this spatter, the pattern appeared to show a direction of travel.
Although the spatter appeared to come from an impact close to the floor “by some mechanism”, there was no obvious blood found on the floor in this area. It appeared a clean-up of bloodstaining on the floor had taken place.
Blood in the sink area was consistent with the washing of a bloodstained injury or object in the sink.
There were two small adjacent bloodstains on the ceiling of the cell.
Afternoon update: Cross-examined, Mr Gillespie accepted that there was a possibility that a pair of bloodstained track pants found on the cell floor could have been used to wipe up some of the blood. There was a possibility from the diluted blood found in the sink, that some stained item had been washed there.
A test with Luminol, a very sensitive chemical that detected blood staining, showed a large area of the floor affected by blood stains. This was consistent with an attempt to wipe up bloodstaining on the floor.
Some wet blood was on top of wiped-up blood, indicating that whoever was cleaning up the floor was also dripping blood as he was doing it.
Some of the blood-staining in the cell may have been the result of the clean-up, or from the activity in the cell when assistance was being given to Parata.
He said he could not say which blood patterns were the result of the assault.
The trial before Justice Gerald Nation and a jury is continuing.
Category: News
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