Tauranga toddler Sadie-Leigh Gardner spent her final days grizzly and irritable with a worsening cold. 

She had a quiet Wednesday morning at her grandmother’s house, playing with toys but still unwell and when her mum came to pick her up, the pair decided Sadie-Leigh needed to be seen by a doctor the next day. 

But she never made it to the appointment. 

Hours later an ambulance was called, not due to her respiratory illness or asthma, but because Sadie-Leigh had suffered “unsurvivable brain injuries”. 

Crown prosecutor Richard Jenson opened Adrian Collin Clancy’s retrial at the High Court at Rotorua on Monday, telling the jury the 45-year-old allegedly violently assaulted Sadie-Leigh while her mother was at a beauty appointment. 

Adrian Clancy denies causing the head injuries that led to the death of his ex-girlfriend's toddler in 2019. 

The Crown says Clancy must have become angry and frustrated while in sole charge of the toddler, and lashed out, causing blunt force trauma to her head. 

Sadie-Leigh’s mother, who can’t be named for legal reasons, left her then-partner lying on the couch watching tennis and placing bets through the TAB app on his phone while the toddler slept in her room. 

It’s alleged he’d been alone with her for just under 20 minutes before he turned up at the neighbour’s unit carrying the floppy and barely breathing 17-month-old. An ambulance was called, but she died in Starship Hospital just under 48 hours later. 

Jenson said Clancy gave police a statement, telling them he’d heard the toddler having a coughing fit that lasted about 30 seconds, before she went quiet. 

When he checked her about five minutes later, she was struggling to breathe so he’d attempted CPR, before taking her to the neighbours. 

The Crown says this is not a truthful explanation of what happened that afternoon. 

Jenson said the jury would need to assess how Sadie-Leigh was earlier in the day, before being left in Clancy’s care, what the medical experts say about how she may have suffered the fatal injuries, and when those injuries would have been apparent to those caring for her. 

When Sadie-Leigh arrived at Tauranga Hospital just after 4pm on March 27, 2019, she was found to have multiple brain bleeds and fractures. She was transferred to Starship children’s hospital in Auckland by helicopter, and further examinations found she also had severe retinal damage to both eyes, to the extent she could no longer see. 

Sadie-Leigh was carried floppy and barely breathing to a neighbour's by her alleged killer, and an ambulance was called, but she later died after her injuries were found to be inoperable. 

The injuries were deemed “inoperable and unsurvivable”, and she died on Friday, March 29. 

Jenson said if the jury were sure Clancy had Sadie-Leigh in his care and had caused the injuries that led to her death, the next question was whether he’d had murderous intent - that either he intended to cause her death, or he meant to cause her any bodily injury which he knew would likely lead to her death, but went ahead regardless. 

The jury would be asked to draw inferences from Clancy’s actions. 

“What else can you intend by slamming, striking, or throwing a 17-month-old girl with sufficient force to fracture their skull?” 

Jenson said at the very least, Clancy must have known the actions were likely to cause a serious head injury from which a child would likely die. 

Clancy’s lawyer, Rob Stevens, gave a brief opening statement and said it was a “tragic case” - particularly so because the defence case is that Sadie-Leigh’s injuries were likely caused by her mother. 

“We will never know how the injuries to Sadie-Leigh’s head were caused... it may well have been an accident,” Stevens said. 

“It may have been [she] simply lost her temper and, in an instant, did something she will regret for the rest of her life.” 

He said it was “no easy thing” to accept a mother might have caused the death of her own child, and it was easier to assume a mother’s partner would do that. 

However, the jury would hear that Sadie-Leigh’s mother had just as much opportunity to inflict the fatal blow, and in March 2019, she was “really struggling” to cope with parenting the toddler. 

The jury would also hear evidence that “telling the truth is not one of [her] strong points.” 

The trial continues. 

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.