A nine-month – old girl whose body washed up on the beach of Surfers Paradise was probably still alive when her mentally ill father threw her into a river, a judge heard.
As her upcoming first birthday “would have meant the end of the world” the 49-year-old man later stated to have “sacrificed” the child, his NSW Supreme Court trial was told on Monday.
As his wife and young son sheltered in the Tweed Mall car park on November 17, 2018, the homeless man allegedly carried his daughter through torrential rain and’ cast her’ into the Tweed River.
“It is possible (she) had already been smothered. However, it is more likely she was still alive and drowned,” crown prosecutor Brendan Campbell said in his opening address.
Currents and tides took the girl 20 kilometres north to the popular Gold Coast beach, where while on a midnight walk on November 19, an 18-year-old school leaver made a grim discovery.
It is not possible to name the accused man, since doing so would reveal his son.
Justice Helen Wilson is expected to tell a forensic psychiatrist that the father had a long history of delusional delusions concerning children and suffered from a schizophrenic disorder.