{"id":311117,"date":"2026-03-03T15:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T15:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/311117\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T15:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T15:17:14","slug":"baby-poseidyns-injuries-unlikely-to-be-accidental-inquiry-hears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/311117\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Poseidyn’s injuries unlikely to be accidental, inquiry hears"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Starship<\/p>\n

\nStarship Children’s Hospital.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Cole Eastham-Farrelly\n<\/p>\n

A coronial inquiry into the death of 10-month-old Poseidyn Hemopo-Pickering has entered its second day.<\/p>\n

Poseidyn was rushed to Middlemore Hospital and then taken to Starship Children’s Hospital on the evening of 5 September, 2020, after being found unresponsive at his Manurewa home.<\/p>\n

He died in hospital the following morning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anthony Simon Pickering was acquitted of murdering his son in 2022 after a jury trial, and no one has been held responsible for the baby boy’s death.<\/p>\n

The purpose of the coronial inquiry<\/a> is to determine how Poseidyn died and the circumstances leading up to it, not criminal or civil liability.<\/p>\n

At the Coroner’s Court in Auckland on Tuesday, Professor Colin Smith, a neuropathologist who examined a scan of Poseidyn’s brain, gave evidence as part of the inquiry. He appeared via audio-visual link from the UK.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the inquiry Dr Fiona Miles – on duty at Starship Hospital’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit when Poseidyn arrived – said the hospital was told he fell and hit his head on a windowsill. But the severity of his injuries raised concern that they were non-accidental.<\/p>\n

Smith also said Poseidyn’s injuries being caused by an accidental fall from a short distance did not seem plausible.<\/p>\n

“It’s not uncommon for the toddler age group to fall over and hit their heads against the edge of tables or chairs and get a nasty bump, and they may get a skull fracture associated with it, but they don’t have a fatal head injury from that.<\/p>\n

“In my opinion, there is no evidence to suggest this is a reasonable explanation for the severity of the head injury in this case.”<\/p>\n

He said Poseidyn’s injuries would have required a greater force to inflict – and appeared to have suffered a serious skull fracture, a laceration of the brain and a blood clot in the brain.<\/p>\n

He said this would have caused “extreme distress”, and it would have been obvious to those around Poseidyn that something was seriously wrong.<\/p>\n

He said he would expect loss of consciousness either immediately or within a few minutes.<\/p>\n

The inquiry continues.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starship Children’s Hospital. Photo: RNZ \/ Cole Eastham-Farrelly A coronial inquiry into the death of 10-month-old Poseidyn Hemopo-Pickering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-311117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}