DELESTRE

PROVIDENCE — In a videotaped statement given to a Woonsocket police sergeant, Gilbert Delestre, who is on trial for beating his girlfriend’s 3-year-old nephew to death, said he backhanded the boy and he tumbled down the staircase of the Woonsocket apartment the couple shared.

“He fell backwards, like he did a flip,” Delestre told Todd Brien, then a detective sergeant with the Woonsocket Police Department in an interview he gave in the early hours of Oct. 30, 2004. Delestre had known Brien since he was a child.

The videotape was shown in the third day of the Superior Court trial. Delestre is charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

On that day, prosecutors say Delestre and his girlfriend, Katherine Bunnell, beat Thomas J. Wright severely after they got home at 2:30 a.m. and found yogurt and milk spilled on a new living room rug. Thomas was declared brain dead and died Oct. 31.

Delestre’s statement appeared to be contradicted by testimony given earlier in the day by Dr. Reena Isaac, who was a consulting pediatrician at Hasbro Children’s Hospital at the time and attended Thomas. Thomas arrived comatose to the hospital, said Isaac, now an assistant professor of pediatrics with Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. Thomas had bleeding on the brain. He had significant bruises to his head and face. His left femur was broken.

The injuries were not consistent with a fall down the stairs, Isaac said, when prodded by Assistant Attorney General Scott Erickson.

“This child sustained multiple injuries,” she said. “Many children fall down the stairs. They don’t suffer this amount of injuries.”

“A femur fracture, we don’t see that type of break” from falling down a flight of stairs, she said. The femur broke with one end of the bone lifting over the other. “That requires a significant amount of force, blunt force trauma. This was a 3-year-old little boy,” she said.

Bunnell’s babysitter, Kayla Roderick, 19, had testified Thursday that on the night of the beatings, she was in the apartment and turned to see Thomas flying through the air from Delestre’s direction. The toddler fell on the floor with his left leg twisted under his belly. In the videotape, Delestre, 27, repeatedly denies throwing Thomas across the living room.

In the videotape, Delestre waits in the interview room at Woonsocket police headquarters. He crosses his arms on the table and puts his head down on them and cries. At one point, he sits up and punches his left cheek.

He tells Brien that when he got home from a night out with Bunnell and his cousin the house was “trashed.” He said he went upstairs. “I told T.J. he was a bad boy. He had to go downstairs to show him what he did,” Delestre said.

He said that Bunnell gave the boy a spanking. His lawyer, Robert Mann, had said in his opening argument that Delestre did not intend to kill the boy. The jury should acquit him of the murder and conspiracy charges and return a verdict of manslaughter he argued.

Bunnell and Delestre were caring for Thomas, his brothers and their own two daughters while Bunnell’s sister, the mother of Thomas, Karen Wright, was in prison for drug possession.

Bunnell was convicted in May of second-degree murder and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.

Delestre’s cousin, Jose Santiago, 31, testified yesterday that he tried to revive Thomas on Bunnell’s living room floor because he had stopped breathing. Santiago had gone out with the couple that night to celebrate getting out of prison. He said he was drunk and had vomited when they returned to Bunnell’s apartment. He had left but returned to get his cell phone and jacket when Bunnell told him Thomas wasn’t breathing. He was limp. “I woke up. My heart started racing. It was something I’m not used to seeing,” Santiago said.

He grabbed her cell phone from her and dialed 911 for help and handed Bunnell the phone while someone was still on the line and took the baby from her. Bunnell hung up on the 911 call.

Santiago got a spoon from the kitchen and placed it under Thomas’ nose to see if he was breathing but the spoon didn’t fog up, he said. He put the boy on the living room floor and tried to resuscitate him by breathing into his mouth.

Bunnell tried to grab Thomas’ body from him, he testified. He punched her in the face, he told the jury. He then heard the ambulance.

tpina@projo.com