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<\/p>\nA coronial inquest has heard the parents of deceased twin boys could not explain mobile phone usage and why the father retrieved a sheet off the clothesline in the hours before the babies were found dead.<\/p>\n
The 18-week-old twins, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, died in their Far North Queensland home in late 2021.<\/p>\n
Born at 27 weeks’ gestation, the twins had been at home on oxygen for about a month before they died.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the first day of the inquest in Cairns, Coroner Melinda Zerner said there were a “number of inconsistencies in evidence which have not been addressed”.<\/p>\n
In giving evidence to the court, the parents \u2014 who also cannot be identified for legal reasons \u2014 said they were asleep until the father found the dead babies about mid-morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The mother said the infants were bathed and went to sleep about 8pm or 9pm in the parents’ room.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Council Assisting the Coroner, Laura Reece KC, has been questioning how the couple’s shared mobile phone’s data was used when both parents said they were asleep. NOTE: file picture. (ABC News:\u00a0Victoria Pengilley)<\/p>\n
The court heard the mother settled them after that and went to sleep herself about midnight.<\/p>\n
The court heard the father woke the next morning about 10am.<\/p>\n
“They were stiff and cold, and I tried resuscitating them,” he told the court.<\/p>\n
The court heard one of the babies had purple colouring on the left side of his face.<\/p>\n
The mother was woken by her own mother crying in the room, “Shouting wake up, wake up, look at your boys”, the court heard.<\/p>\n
The father told the court he was playing computer games and watched movies in the same room in which the babies slept and went to sleep about 1:30am or 2am.<\/p>\n
But the court was shown one minute of footage from a neighbour’s security camera showing a man at the couple’s house go downstairs about 3am and remove a sheet from the washing line before shaking it off and returning inside.<\/p>\n
The father told the court that while he couldn’t recall doing that, he confirmed to the court he was the only male adult upstairs in the home that night.<\/p>\n
Council assisting the coroner, Laura Reece KC, also questioned the father about data use on the couple’s shared mobile phone between 3:18am and 5:55am.<\/p>\n
“I can’t remember using my phone at that time,” the father told the court.<\/p>\n
To which Ms Reece said: “Someone was awake using the phone in that room.”<\/p>\n
The mother told the court she had slept through the night and also did not use the phone.<\/p>\n
The court heard the parents cared for the infants in shifts, with the father staying awake through the night to bottle feed and then napping during the day.<\/p>\n
Coroner Zerner asked the father why the babies were not fed for more than 12 hours before their death.<\/p>\n
“There’s no evidence to suggest, or nobody has provided a version to say the twins woke at any time from 9pm through to 11am. Can you explain that?” the coroner asked.<\/p>\n
To which the father replied: “No, I can’t.”<\/p>\n
The coroner indemnified the parents against criminal charges based on truthful evidence and enquired if any police officers were in the courtroom.<\/p>\n
The inquest continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A coronial inquest has heard the parents of deceased twin boys could not explain mobile phone usage and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":839599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,165945,209513,209512,209514,50,55925,343934],"class_list":["post-839598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-australia","tag-far-north-queensland","tag-fnq","tag-gimuy","tag-marlin-coast","tag-news","tag-tropical-queensland","tag-twin-death-inquest"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116681722209793081","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/839599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}