Fredrik Blencke: Sydney banker pleads not guilty to assault of wife Annabelle Price in children’s hospital

A Sydney nurse allegedly heard the wife of a successful Sydney banker cry “help” and witnessed red marks on her arms after an alleged assault in a children’s hospital, a court has heard.

A Sydney nurse has told a court of the tense moment she heard the wife of a high-flying banker cry out for help after he allegedly assaulted her.

Fredrik Blencke, 49, has pleaded not guilty to a common assault police allege took place at the Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick on November 14 last year.

Speaking at the witness stand in Sydney’s Downing Centre Court, nurse Rochelle McCue told the court Annabelle Price visited the hospital with a child who had become unresponsive at a park on the Sunday afternoon.

Fredrick Blencke (left) arriving at Sydney’s Downing Centre Court with defence lawyer Lauren Macdougall.

Ms McCue told the court after being introduced to Ms Price, she left the room for five minutes and came back to be introduced to Blencke, who was holding a suitcase and some food.

After performing vital signs on the baby, the court heard she went to attend to a child at a bed facing away from Ms Price when she saw the mother of that child’s face drop as “if something had happened”.

“As her face dropped, I turned around and saw [Blencke] stumble through the curtain and was standing at the end of the bed space as though he’d been pushed or stumbled,” she told the court.”

“I walked over … and said ‘is everything okay in here’?”

Annabelle Price outside Downing Centre Court.

The pair during happier times.

Ms McCue told the court she remembered she also heard the word “help” from Ms Price, that was not as loud as a scream but was “a bit more raised” than talking pitch.

She told the court Ms Price responded: “No it’s not, he has just grabbed me.”

The nurse told the court Ms Price said there was an AVO against him and asked the nurse to “make him leave”.

Continuing cross-examination, the nurse said she heard Ms Price say “do you want to break your AVO? Do you want to go to jail, mate?”

“They were arguing among themselves and [Blencke] said to [Price] ‘you’re a psycho, I brought you your things … stop behaving this way.”

Mc McCue told the court he seemed “calm and collected” while Ms Price was “heightened, anxious, angry, frightened, nervous … a bit of ball of emotion I suppose”.

Asked by Blencke’s barrister Phillip English why she thought she was afraid, the nurse said Ms Price seemed “a little bit shaken and jittery.”

Sydney couple Freddie Blencke (right) and Annabelle Price (left).

The nurse told the court Blencke left when she asked him to. She said she then asked Ms Price if she was okay and she said “he’s grabbed me like this” while crossing her arms with open palms across her shoulders.

“I’ve noticed the red spots on her arm after she’s done that and she said ‘no I’m not okay’,” the nurse said.

“I said ‘is there anything you need for first aid?’ She said ‘I’m starving, I just want to eat my sushi’,” the nurse told the court.

When the nurse returned in about an hour, she said Ms Price was much calmer and did not want to call the police.

During cross-examination by Blencke’s lawyer, Ms McCue said she was “very surprised” that Ms Price did not want to call the police, given she said he had breached an AVO.

Blencke’s lawyer also questioned why she wrote in the initial incident report that Ms Price had invited Blencke to the hospital, to which she said “I assumed that because he was there”.

She told the court she later learned, while doing her police interview, that he had invited her.

Investment banker Freddie Blencke.

The lawyer also questioned when exactly she heard Ms Price yell help, and noted in her police statement she said it was after Blencke had stumbled out from the curtain.

“Yes – it was all within a few seconds,” the nurse responded.

Blencke’s lawyer told the court the nurse wrote in her initial statement that she saw Ms Price push Blencke out of the curtain.

Ms McCue told the court she “saw him stumble through the curtain so I assumed he had been pushed”.

Blencke’s lawyer told the nurse she had not said in her statement that Ms Price was frightened despite using that description minutes earlier in court.

He asked whether she noticed the red spots on Ms Price’s arm when she first walked up to her and Blencke, to which she said she did not.

Later, Mr English asked the nurse if that was an area of the body she was observing at the time, and she responded it was not, as she was trying to de-escalate the situation.

Blencke has pleaded not guilty to one count of common assault and two counts of contravening an AVO.

A decision will be handed down at Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on June 17.