Daughter’s death not murder

A homeless man who tossed his baby daughter into the Tweed River in a ‘sacrifice’ to save the world, has been found not guilty of her murder due to mental illness.

The court was told of his history of mental illness, exacerbated by drug and alcohol abuse that included smoking cannabis and drinking up to four litres of wine a day.

A homeless man who tossed his baby daughter into the Tweed River in a “sacrifice” to save the world, has been found not guilty of her murder due to mental illness.

In torrential rain on November 17, 2018, after first trying to give the nine-month-old girl away, the man carried her to the water and threw her in alive.

Her body drifted 20km north in the currents and was found face down in the sand at Surfers Paradise two days later.

After a three-day judge-alone trial in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney, Justice Helen Wilson on Wednesday found the 49-year-old man, who legally cannot be identified, could not be held criminally responsible.

The court was told of his history of mental illness, exacerbated by drug and alcohol abuse that included smoking cannabis and drinking up to four litres of wine a day.

In at least 35 hospital admissions, his delusional beliefs about infants had been well documented, with hallucinations about killing babies first recorded 17 years before he killed his daughter.

He had thought his daughter was cursed, and that her ­approaching first birthday would have meant the end of the world, the court was told. “I loved my daughter but I had to do it for the sake of the world,” he told a doctor.

Professor David Greenberg called the death a “preventable tragedy”, and said he believed the man was suffering from chronic schizophrenia and did not know his actions were morally wrong.

The man is a member of a large and prominent Torres Strait ­Islander family. His partner, the baby’s mother, is a former Victorian university student who cannot be named. Aged 23 at the time, she was sheltering nearby from the rain with the couple’s two-year-old son when her daughter was killed.

A cousin spoke at the time of trying to support the family, putting them up in her home in the months before the killing. But the mother had turned down help with the baby and the family moved out, at times camping in Gold Coast sand dunes.

The man will be held under mental health laws until he’s ­regarded as being fit for release.