A weeping teenage mother has described seeing her baby daughter locked in a moving tumble dryer.
Thomas Dunn, 25, has gone on trial at Dundee Sheriff Court accused of assaulting the girl at an address in Arbroath.
The child’s 19-year-old mother, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her children, told how Dunn was a friend – and that though they had been “intimate”, they were not in a relationship.
The woman said on one occasion she had visited Dunn and was washing dishes in the kitchen when he came in carrying the baby.
She said Dunn was playing with the child and then joked about putting her in the tumble dryer.
But moments later the mother turned her back and heard the machine activate. Asked by procurator fiscal depute Nicola Gillespie to describe the events, she replied: “I turned around and saw her in it and I ran across to open it up but he got there first and opened it and pulled her out.”
The teenage mum said Dunn would offer to look after the child to “give her a break”.
She had left the child with him on three occasions and the final time, on January 8 2018, was for the longest period.
She said he “offered to look after the baby”, adding she then got a Facebook message saying the baby had fallen and banged her nose and it was bleeding.
Later that day her friend had received a message from Dunn stating that “something urgent” had happened to the baby.
Dunn allegedly told her the baby had woken from a nap and her body had gone limp.
At the hospital it was confirmed by doctors that the child had suffered multiple fractures of the skull, a bite mark to the arm and several bruises on her body.
Dunn, of Comrie Crescent, Hamilton, is accused of assaulting the baby to her severe injury and to the danger of her life between December 18 2017 and January 8 2018 at an address in Arbroath.
As well as allegedly putting her in the tumble dryer, he is said to have placed his hand over her mouth and restricted her breathing, struck her on the head and body, repeatedly struck her against an unknown object and bitten her on the arm.
Dunn is further alleged to have repeatedly assaulted another baby over the course of almost three years by putting his hand over the boy’s mouth and nose and pinching it, restricting his breathing between April 3 2015 and January 8 2018.
The trial, before Sheriff Alastair Brown, continues.
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